by Joe Ducie
“You’re lit up like a forest fire, mate.” I slapped him on the shoulder. “Fear not, practice makes perfect—every time.”
“Can I ask…?” He glanced at Sophie. “Can I ask why you were exiled, Mr. Hale?”
“You can ask, sure.”
Sophie rejoined us at the counter and jumped up onto her perch. As she swung her legs back and forth, her pink All Stars swished up and down Ethan’s jeans. “Declan did some very good and some very bad things,” she said. “There was a war in Forget. A hundred-year war that spanned time and space and universes. I’ve told you bits and pieces. Declan ended it, at great cost.”
“That’s a nice way of putting it.” I poured myself two fingers of Glenlivet. I always had a bottle of it within arm’s reach. “I pulled a kind of a dick move and crippled something called the Story Thread.”
“The Story Thread?”
“All those other universes we were just talking about, written and accessed through the Infernal Works? They are part of the Story Thread, a cord of pure existence—of all existence—running through the Void and fighting the creeping nothing that is the space between universes. The Story Thread fills that nothing with anything, and has existed since the first Willful men and women put pen to page thousands of years ago.”
“What happened?”
His question deserved another sip of liquid gold. “I unleashed the Degradation, which forced an end to the war. At the time it was a chance worth taking.”
Sophie sniffed. “Never mind the unforeseen consequences, huh?”
“They were pretty damned unforeseen at the time, ‘Phie. You think I wanted exile? You know what we lost—who we lost.”
She relented with a sigh. “I know.”
I turned back to Ethan. “Anyway, after the Degradation was unleashed, the Story Thread sort of… froze. I say crippled, because it can no longer support new universes, new worlds. I broke Forget. Every book written by a Willful author since the Degradation is just a book. Existing only on the page and impossible to use to travel across the Void.”
Ethan played with the buttons on his shirt in the uncomfortable silence that followed.
I put him out of his misery. “There’s a helluva lot to learn, kid. I’m pretty sure I don’t have the time to teach you, which is why Sophie will take you to the Academy in a year or two, when you’re ready.”
“Is it like university?”
I laughed. “Oh good god, no. It’s far crueler—like a military school for misguided youth. Since the war’s end, perhaps the curriculum is more scholarly, but I doubt it. You’re a lot older than those usually accepted. Twenty years ago, the Academy would’ve found you before your tenth birthday and shipped you off to Forget. The Tome Wars changed all that, and kids with the talent slipped through the nets.”
“You started at the Academy at age ten?” Ethan asked incredulously.
“Actually, I started at six, but that’s beside the point. You learn hard and you learn quick. Sophie spent three years there, eleven to fourteen.”
“Do you graduate? Is there, like a test, or something?”
“Or something. Students are tested constantly, in anything from enchantments to ward-casting, to augmented weaponry.” I thought back to those days, almost fondly. “Then, at fifteen, you’re sent on your first quest, called the Great Quest, which is a rite of passage for the newest Knights—a solo journey across Forget.”
“Sounds… awesome.”
“It is, in a way. You see, at that point in the training, the quest is more of a formality. The students have passed all their tests, learned how to command their Will, and traversed countless realms of Forget, under guidance. The Academy has been sending kids on the Great Quest for centuries, and really, its purpose is to allow fresh Knights to test their skills out in the real world.”
“What is the Great Quest?”
“Nothing too special. Just find the road to the Lost City of Atlantis, and reclaim the troves of treasure and knowledge that vanished there over ten thousand years ago.”
“Oh. Neat.”
“Yeah, you see why the Great Quest is viewed as nothing more than a formality.”
“Because Atlantis isn’t real?”
I held up my thumb and forefinger about half an inch apart. “Close. After a thousand years of searching, no one has ever found even a trace of the city, beyond scraps of old parchment and half-whispered myths. My Great Quest was a bit different, however.”
Ethan tilted his head. “Oh? You didn’t have to go chasing after a fairytale?”
“No, no I did. Only difference was that I found it.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Valentine’s Day
I used to work for the Knights Infernal—an order of men and women dedicated to protecting the world from its own imagination. Terrible worlds existed inside books. Terrible, wonderful, amazing worlds of such depth and beauty, such tragedy and horror, that the ideas became manifest.
The fiction became a lie that told a truth, and a cord of the Story Thread.
The Renegades started off as a fractured cell of the Knights. They believed the Knights’ power existed to unmake the world, or, more accurately, to reshape it, an idea that opposed everything represented by the Knights Infernal. The conflict between the Renegades and the Knights was one for the ages. They fought in shadows and darkness, in libraries and bookshops across the face of the True Earth and in and beyond the Infernal Works.
In deepest, darkest Forget.
They had all but destroyed one another five years ago, in the Tome Wars. I’d played a significant role during the war—I had ended it. My reward for forcing peace?
Exile.
Expelled from the Knights Infernal and barred from all of Forget.
I’d unleashed a horrific construct of Will that became known as the Degradation, and though the act saved many Knights and Renegades, I’d crippled the Story Thread to make it happen. Unbreakable laws had been broken. Lives had been lost. The one line in the sand that neither the Knights nor the Renegades would dare cross… I crossed.
The bell above the door chimed and I took a sip of wine. Two days had passed since the altercation with the Pagemaster, young Jeff. Light, purposeful footsteps clicked against the wooden floor. I heard the swish of a worn cloak. Clare Valentine stood before me in the window alcove. I’d been expecting her earlier.
“Hello, Commander.”
“Just Declan now, Clare. You know that.”
Clare offered me a sad smile. Her short spiky hair was a terrific shade of purple and green. She looked younger than I remembered, but then the last time I’d seen her, we’d been at war. Perhaps the five years since had been kind to her. I hoped so.
“Aye, I know that. You know why I’m here.”
She didn’t make it a question. The scent of her perfume, soft lavender, brought back a rush of pleasant and not so pleasant memories, of Tal and a sword of rose petals.
“Of course,” I said.
In her right hand, Clare grasped a book firmly with her index finger between the pages, just as we’d been taught. She glanced around the shop, most likely for something more to say, her eyes roaming over the empty spirit and wine bottles littering the shelves and windowsill, before settling on the boxes of crinkled paper—my endless, imperfect manuscript.
“Now that,” she said, “is perhaps the most dangerous thing I’ve ever seen. Declan Hale, storyteller.”
“It is wonderful to see you, Clare. Were you sent to kill me?”
Clare smirked and offered me a sly wink. “Even five years away from the field, exiled beyond the Final Vanguards, you could still wipe the floor with me, I reckon.”
I shrugged and stood, keeping my hands free and visible, and stepped across the space between us. She was a good two feet shorter than me, but her Will was one of the strongest in the world. “Faraday sent you.”
“Yes.”
“He very much wants me silenced.”
“Yes.”
“Hmm. He claimed the Dragon Throne unopposed, from what I hear.” I heard very little, these days. “Probably for the best.”
“Oh, yes.”
“After Nightmare’s Reach, after what I did?”
Clare paled and couldn’t hold my gaze. “To speak of that is forbidden. Infernal Heresy, punishable by—”
“Exile? Death? All manner of unpleasant misery?”
Clare bit her lip. A strange thing happened. One of her green eyes turned as blue as a sapphire, and she laughed shakily. “Everyone knows what you did, but no one talks about it. They speak of… well, some say you should have claimed the Dragon Throne for yourself, Declan.”
“That old thing? No, no. Faraday tied his own noose when he took that seat, and he did it with a smile. You wait and see.”
“Jon Faraday is a lot of things, but he did keep the Knights together after the war. We owe him for that much.” Clare reached out and ran a finger along the rim of my reading glasses. “He asked me to tell you not to interfere. We know the Renegades have licked their wounds, and small factions are regrouping. You should expect some reprisal, given your past. He told me to remind you that the only reason you kept your head was because of your service during the war. Declan, please, Faraday won’t let you be a power unto yourself.”
“It’s not a question of who’s going to let me, but more a question of who’s going to stop me. My service is not the only reason I survived, Clare.”
Clare’s gaze turned wistful. “You always did love the classics.”
I ran my fingers along the ropy scar tissue that stretched across her neck, from ear to ear. A madman had cut her throat, once upon a time, and she had died, ever so briefly. I leaned in close and kissed her cheek.
The book fell from her hands as she wrapped her shaking but strong arms around me. Her skin was soft, sweet, just as I remembered. Clare gasped, and the gulf of five long years between us may as well have been five minutes.
Her tears were salty and warm and she tasted like cinnamon and lavender, though our lips never met. To kiss properly was to make it real, and we’d never broken that rule and wouldn’t break it now.
At least, I thought not. Clare gently brushed her lips against mine—a kiss, but only just, that changed everything. Oh dear, blood in the water.
I led her, and a bottle of merlot, upstairs.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jolly Folly
Clare dressed in a dusty shaft of sunlight. She took her time, too, rolled up her stockings slowly, one tiny foot poised on a stack of nineteenth century classics.
I admired the view from my bed. Late afternoon was bleeding toward dusk through the skylight. I had not felt this relaxed in years. Clare had always been good for my soul, ever since we were kids at the Infernal Academy in Ascension City. Two major war campaigns and twelve years stood between then and now.
Clare tossed me my pants, shirt and waistcoat. I shrugged into them with reluctance, not wanting our time together to come to a close. Maybe she’d stay awhile, if I asked. I joined her on the edge of the bed and slipped an arm around her petite waist. She had a familiar memory opened to chapter six.
“Auron’s Folly,” I said. A story about an evil queen and a prophecy that claimed her first child would both save and destroy the world. Some said it was a true story, as so many were, about the Renegades. “Still your favorite?”
Clare caressed the pages. “First time I’ve opened it in six years. Want to head inside?”
“Heh. There are two things I’ve not been inside of since my exile.” I squeezed her close. “Well, one thing now.”
“Oh, leave off.”
“It’s true. A condition of my expulsion was that Good King Faraday forbade me to dive in and out of stories. If I was caught, he swore he’d have me executed. You know that.”
“Lord Oblivion itself couldn’t keep you out of a good book. I don’t believe for a minute you haven’t been diving.” She snuggled up against me. “I won’t tell him if you won’t.”
“Ah, but what if this is an elaborate ruse, sweet Clare, to seduce me, lower my guard, and have my head chopped off and mounted above Faraday’s gilded throne.”
“You know me better than that.”
“Do I? Then where have you been these past years? Jumping through hoops for the Knights? You should see them from my rather unique perspective.” I shook my head. “Hard to tell where the Knights end and the Renegades begin, if viewed from outside the struggle. Especially given this tepid peace.”
A flash of anger forced Clare’s right eye from blue to crimson and back again. Only one fool could ever hope to provoke this woman and live. “You’ve changed,” she said. “You’ve changed so much. Treason and blasphemy roll off your tongue like words onto the page. Broken quill! Declan, you were better than this.”
And the truth of that was buried in fiction, wasn’t it? Caught between one word and the next across the blasted wastelands of time. “I do miss the Drifting City, I suppose.”
Clare placed her hand over mine on the pages of Auron’s Folly. I felt her Will pressed against the book. According to the clock on the wall, it was seventeen minutes past five. The words upon the yellowed pages began to shimmer. The pressure in my ears was almost painful, and I again had that old taste of copper, like blood on the tongue or a mouthful of coins, as the dusty sunlight faded to black.
I added a drop of my own Will to Clare’s invocation, and we slipped from one world into another, skimming along the dark impassable Void.
The sensation was always like walking into a cool mist on an autumn morning. I felt a rush of air as we crossed the boundary of nothing on the edge of everything. Then I caught a scent, like rain touching a hot road, as in my gut I had the sense of falling, falling so far and so fast that—
Clare slipped her hand into mine, and we stood upon a tall cliff face, looking down a vertical drop of over a mile at a vast ocean. Icebergs made of pure diamonds groaned along the surface. The stars overhead were alien, the constellations dimmed by the light of the twin moons rising to the east.
I took a breath of air so fresh and clear that I felt dizzy, or maybe that was from the height. Despite what the pretty woman at my side thought, I had not spent a single minute inside a book since my exile, and it was good to be back. Better than good, the feeling was like coming home. The countless realms of Forget were often more real than reality.
“This was always my favorite chapter,” Clare said. “When the cities rise up between—”
“Oh, shush. It may not even come. Let’s just watch.”
We sat down together on the edge of the precipice and watched the moons swim across the sky. Minutes became hours, as the diamond icebergs bobbed along the dark water. After a time, lights appeared below the surface of the water—thousands of them. The night, the distant stars, were drowning.
Clare shivered and nestled in close. The air was silent at first, but then the grinding of gears and the tick-tick-tick of ancient machinery echoed up the cliff face. An entire city, a living, breathing metropolis, broke the surface of the ocean, ascending from the depths far below.
Miles across in diameter, the fabled Drifting City rose and fell on undulating waves, forcing large chunks of glowing iceberg diamond apart. Vast conduits and pillars sought hold on the base of the cliff. The shock vibrated up the mountain and Clare and I rolled away from the edge, lest we fall.
The city may have been in a story from our world, the True Earth, but here, we were still bound by the rules. Death here was still death. Many a Forgetful traveler had perished, mistaking reality for fantasy.
The living city sang as its struts dug deep into the mountain, seeking precious metals and rare natural resources for its growth. The mighty skyscrapers gleamed in the starlight. People rode the biomechanical beast, hundreds of thousands of them. The city was a wonder, an impossible, perfect wonder.
“I could watch that for days,” Clare whispered. Both her eyes were the same color now, a brilliant burnished
yellow. “I’m glad you came with me, Declan. This moment would never have been the same without you.”
“Time to go, Clare.”
Clare sighed yet nodded. Going back was easier than moving forward, so long as we remained tethered to the book back in my bedroom. We were tied to our real world, to the True Earth we knew best. If inter-dimensional travel could be described as easy, then it was simply imposing our Will against the magnificent creation around us. Letting go and falling back. The lights of the feeding city far below faded away.
I glanced at the clock on the wall in my bedroom. Coming up to nine o’clock back here in the real world. Hours had gone by as the city had drifted across the sea, shoving aside icebergs made of glittering diamond. Time flowed swift and true in both worlds, which meant I still had no explanation for watching myself die. If the Degradation had progressed far enough… but no, time was still wounding all heels.
Speaking of time. “I’m going to die, Clare. Soon.”
“You sound so certain.” She bit her lip. “There’s something else I wanted to tell you, about a rumor circling Ascension City that Morpheus Renegade broke Aloysius Jade out of Starhold.”
“Good for that homicidal son-of-a-bitch.”
“Faraday couldn’t prove it, but rumor is Jade was unchained in order to hunt you down and drag you back to Renegade’s court.”
Oh.
Shit.
All at once my impending death seemed far more… impending.
With the exception of myself, Jade had perhaps the highest body count in all Forget. He was a cruel bastard, too, but us war heroes often were. Jade had been my teacher, once upon a time, at the Infernal Academy.
“Heh. Five years of nothing and then this all comes to a head in just a few days. Isn’t that always the way?” Fair but unfair. I shouldn’t have survived the Tome Wars. “Silly to think I’d be left alone after the damage I caused. Silly to think I deserved to be left alone.”
“You’re frightening me now, Declan.”