by Joe Ducie
The path meandered alongside a river too wide to cross. I skirted the banks and headed as north as I could manage. The cobbled, broken stone and overgrown weeds were dwindling. The canopy had receded, too, and I beheld the late afternoon sky overhead. Tiny zipping dots, cruisers and ships, darted to and fro within the clouds. Ascension City drew close now, and my whole returning-to-the-scene-of-the-crime lark began to seem very real. The trees had thinned enough that I could glimpse the edge of the forest.
Ten minutes later, I emerged from the tree line on the crest of a tall hill. From that vantage point, I beheld my old stomping grounds with a mix of wearied relief and rising trepidation.
“Oh, you pretty thing,” I muttered.
I’d sensed home before I’d seen it. Ascension City housed tens of millions of people. Hundreds of thousands of those were gifted with Will, low-level practitioners, for the most part, who could do little more than light a candle. Other inhabitants fell into the intermediate crowd, who usually couldn’t pass the Academy’s brutal entrance examinations but were suited to enchantment and augmentation work. As for the upper class, the experts, I could sense one or two flares of power on par with the Knights Infernal.
The city looked magnificent.
Modern architecture and ancient design came into relief against a backdrop of darkening sky. Ascension City appeared beyond its time and wouldn’t have looked out of place in an epic Sci-Fi novel set on an alien world. The buildings were futuristic, yet to the east, large swaths were charred and under construction. Reconstruction. Half a decade had passed since I’d left, and most of the damage I’d wrought had yet to be repaired.
But the lights were on, and the roads and skies were heavy with traffic. I guessed the city thrived.
Mighty towers, almost wreathed in clouds, scraped at the sky. Glass domes extended over stadium-sized fields, and walkways stretched from the peak of one building to the next—bridges built in the air over the city. Neon-blue lighting ran up and down the streets and throughout hundreds of the buildings. Its energy came from the conduit of tapped power running beneath the city, a font of true power from the heart of creation, bleeding through a crack in the canvas of reality.
The near-eternal source of energy powered the intricate grid and had kept the city running even during the most strenuous hours of the old wars.
Although most inhabitants didn’t know it, Ascension City was a poor imitation of Atlantis.
One tower rose above all others in the heart of the city and shone like a beacon in the half-light, a white spire of pure obsidian stone, monolithic and imposing. Even at this distance, I could see the unnatural smoothness of the rock, the polished finish and metal trim. Blue lights ran up the tower in a spiral pattern, and a single white sphere of fire, at the tower’s peak, ignited a flat plateau.
The Fae Palace of the Knights Infernal had been carved from a mountain long centuries ago. The heart of the city was the crystal core of a mountain long dead. The rest of Ascension City, some thirty miles across, sprawled out from that central tower.
I had missed this place.
*~*~*~*
I made no effort to mask my appearance as I treaded once more familiar paths through the outskirts of the city.
My journey through the Void had spat me out in the forest bordering the south side of town. Emerging in that location was useful. My current destination, the Cedar Sky—a charming old shop in the market district—was only a half hour’s walk.
The cobblestone lanes and vaulted stone archways marked the way into the sprawling market area. Contemporary hotels and rustic old inns stood side by side and thrust their upper stories above ramshackle shops. Red-and-white-pebbled bricks lined wide boulevards, which in turn were circled by low hills. The city had been built around those hills.
Crowds of Forgetful citizens—men, women, and children born and raised in this world—meandered in the busy streets. Wheelless taxi-cycles, hovering a foot above the ground, zoomed down roadways alongside old wooden carts. Ascension City was a blur of the past, present, and future. With so many conflicting realms, it was impossible for anyone to keep time in order. The city may have been ultramodern in part, by standards back in the real world, but its people and customs spanned five thousand years.
An old farmer selling sticky mangoes the size of soccer balls eyed me warily as I paused on a street corner to wipe the sweat from my brow. “Broken quill, but I know you, don’t I, son?”
“Me? No, I don’t think so.” Best to avoid a riot so early in the game.
I moved on, leaving the old man wagging his finger at me and tapping his head. I made it a few shops down the lane before his startled cry cut through the air. “Hale! By the Everlasting, that was Declan Hale!”
Bugger…
Murmurs and shocked whispers rippled through the throngs of Forgetfuls, putting me in the calm heart of a swirling tornado. In a city of people from all corners of Forget, skins dark or pale, clothes of bright and strange cut, faces masked or hair dyed violent colors, I was the one that stood out like a sore thumb, a record skipping a beat—sing it true, songbird—or a cat hunting among the pigeons. Five years ago, and I imagine even in the years since, my face had been plastered on every wall and screen for a hundred worlds.
“On a steel horse I ride…” Wanted: Dead or Alive.
The crowds parted for me, the infamous exiled Knight, and I strolled through lanes and enjoyed the freedom offered by my pseudo-celebrity. That freedom would all come crashing down soon, I was sure. The soft, pleasant aroma of turmeric and a thousand other spices, teas, and seeds wafted on the air as I headed deeper into the quarter. I was nearly at my destination but kept my eyes peeled for trouble.
I could easily imagine a dagger in the back or a bullet to the brain, not to mention attacks of a more supernatural nature. Strands of silver light trailed behind me from my clenched fists. My Will was alight, daring anyone to try and stop me.
None dared.
A few minutes later, followed by hordes of grim-faced men but so far unmolested, I reached the storefront and home of an old friend. Barrels of cashew nuts, pistachios, and red dates sat out front of the Cedar Sky. Exotic teas and coffees in canvas bags were stacked thirty feet high against the crooked, fieldstone building.
Whistling a merry tune, I let myself in.
Inside was hot and humid. Wiry, Byzantine folk music wailed from an old gramophone. More barrels and satchels of herbs were scattered atop buckled wooden tables. Scents of wolfberry and ginseng hung in the air. That smell, more than anything else so far, made me realize just where I was and how far I’d travelled since breakfast that morning.
“Welcome, welcome,” chimed a deep, cheerful voice from somewhere behind the immense stocks of earthy produce. “Welcome to Cedar Sky. How may I—?” The voice emerged from behind a wall of herbs before it cut off abruptly.
“Aaron!” I pointed a finger at the portly man. “Long time no—”
“No!” Aaron backed away and fell over his chair. He hit the floor with a solid thud which rattled the various alchemical bottles on the shelves. “Oh sweet, broken quill—no, no, no. Not now, not ever. Hale, get out of here! You insane bastard—did anyone see you enter this shop?”
“No.”
“Well, praise Allah for small—”
“Everyone saw me come in here.”
Aaron hauled himself up, his pale face splotched with high spots of red, and whimpered. “Then we are both dead men.”
“You’re not even a little bit happy to see me?”
“Ha!” He shuffled around his shop while he wrung his hands and laughed nervously. “Happy to see you? I’d convinced myself you were dead. You may as well have been. Declan Hale, the harbinger of Degradation itself, exiled from Forget forever under pain of death—and for any who would dare stand with him! No, Hale, no. I am not happy to see you.”
“Give me a hug, big guy.”
Aaron ceased his shuffling and exhaled a long burst of air—the sigh o
f the long suffering. He took a moment to try to compose himself and then burst into tears. “I always knew I’d see you again, in this life or the next.” He wrapped his thick, bear-like arms around me and squeezed. He smelt like Old Spice—wood shavings, sawdust, and probably the 1960s all rolled into one. “You won’t live another day, but it is good to see you.”
“Do you still have the chest I left?”
“Of course I do. And I know what’s in it, too.”
“You didn’t open—?”
“No, I did not. But it started growing, Declan. I spend half my week gardening in the basement of the villa on Lake Delgado because of that damn thing. White roses, everywhere! Everlasting save me, I wouldn’t dare open it.”
“Well, all good then. Not that you could use it, but it’s a relief to know no one else has either.” I tapped my chin. “After all, who’s going to look for Forget’s greatest treasure in your basement?”
*~*~*~*
Aaron and I did not have to wait long. Just long enough to become reacquainted. The years fell away, as they only could with old friends. We shared a cup of honeyed tea and savored the calm before the storm.
No more than fifteen minutes into my surprise visit, we were descended upon by what was possibly every Knight in the city. Ten squads of ten, a hundred adept men and women, looking resplendent in their dress uniforms, filled the street outside. Five older Knights, veterans of the Tome Wars with medals on their chests to prove it, barged into the store with Infernal blades drawn and expressions of forbidding death on their faces… and a little something that might have been fear.
I was placed under arrest—hands bound behind my back with metal cuffs and everything. Aaron was ordered to accompany me and the Knights. He remained unrestrained but no longer as free as he’d been a quarter hour ago. Surrounded by the guard, smoky trails of luminescent silver light cupped in every one of their palms, I was marched through the streets. Half the squad ran ahead and cleared the way to a waiting… machine. Well, the object looked like a helicopter without the blades, and it hovered a few inches from the ground, in a wide plaza at the end of the row.
On closer inspection, I knew it to be a troop carrier, fitted with fusion engines, capable of swift, low-altitude flight. I was familiar with the older models that had been used in the wars, contraptions held together with duct tape and good intentions. The carrier in front of me looked to be a newer model—flashier. Jon Faraday had been disturbingly busy.
Oh well, I suppose Ascension City was nice from above.
We took flight and hastily cut a track through the air, toward the monolithic palace in the centre of town. The skyways must have been cleared in advance for us, for the ride was a smooth, uninterrupted run over the maze of streets below.
“You know they’re probably burning my shop to the ground right now,” Aaron said, rather glumly. “You couldn’t wait until nightfall, could you, Declan? Snuck back under the cover of darkness? Oh no, no, no. Not you, not Declan bloody Hale.”
I chuckled. “You know I own a shop myself these days, back on Earth.”
Aaron blinked. “Oh?”
“I sell books.”
He opened and closed his mouth a few times, like a goldfish bobbing for air. “That is… absurd. Are you intentionally trying to piss off King Faraday?”
“Quiet,” grumbled one of the grizzled old Knights. He had a slick, nasty-looking revolver rested on his knee and pointed at my heart. “One more word, Hale. Just one.”
We landed on the very summit of the palace, a mile above the city, on a helipad next to a twenty-foot-high flaming torch of white light. The Knights spilled out of the cruiser, then clustered themselves around Aaron and me. We didn’t so much walk as were dragged across the landing pad and into a large, lavish elevator cut into the side of the obsidian stone. At this point most of the guard left us, save for the five older Knights who had stormed Aaron’s shop.
The elevator was a tight fit. We descended one hundred floors, entirely bypassing the throne room, the courts, and the Academy levels of the palace. If memory served me, and it did, we were being escorted to the suite levels close to the ground floor. The doors binged open and revealed a hallway that would not have looked out of place in a five-star hotel.
One could almost forget one was in a mile-high palace carved from a single piece of mountainous stone.
I wasn’t thrown into a dark and dank cell, which was something, but a cage is a cage is a cage. Aloysius Jade would have had something to say on the matter, I was sure. Aaron and I were shown to separate rooms. He cast an unhappy glance over his shoulder and disappeared around a bend in the tower.
“Sit,” ordered my revolver-wielding guard, once I was tucked away in my room. I sat. “Your restraints should be along shortly.”
The guard stayed with me until a set of shiny star cuffs were brought up from the Collections. While we waited, his two lackeys stripped and searched me—thoroughly.
“Any one of you handsome bastards could’ve bought me dinner first,” I quipped.
My clothes were seized. Standing naked and unashamed, my body a roadmap of old scars, I didn’t resist the Will suppressing manacles as they closed around my wrists, but I did begrudge how tight they were drawn.
Then the guards withdrew, locking the heavy wooden door behind them. None of them had spoken more than two words to me. Orders against it, most likely. A pitcher of cool water sat on the dresser, across from a large double bed. I poured myself a glass and turned to the large square window, which offered a twilit sky and an impressive view of Ascension City.
I let out a long, slow breath. I was back—home, for all that mattered, breathing the air of my favorite world once more. I retrieved a towel from the en suite bathroom and wrapped it around my waist with some difficulty, given the restraints. The star cuffs sapped my strength and blanketed me in a shroud of fatigue. I tried to conjure a ball of pure energy but couldn’t. Well, no sense in fighting the weariness. After the day I’d had, the bed looked more than inviting.
I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
That night I dreamed of Tal and distant stars. She stole my shadow, wrapped it in light, and cast it spinning across the Void. ‘Oblivion is watching…’ she whispered. Her eyes were the color of heart’s blood.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Punk in Drublic
I awoke with a strangled start just after two in the morning, according to the clock on the wall. Days and nights here in Forget mirrored the cycle back on Earth. My mind was foggy and dull, and I struggled to sit up. The cuffs pressed their diabolical runes against my flesh, locked the door to my Will, and left me feeling as if I hadn’t slept at all.
Yawning, I fell back and decided a few more hours’ rest was priority uno.
Something bright exploded just outside the window. Fireworks, I thought dully. The spinning wheel of color grew until it eclipsed the night sky. Wait…
A blast shattered my window in an impressive display of electric-blue lightning and orange fire. The impact sent me hurtling ass-over-head across the bed and onto the floor.
Needless to say, half a heartbeat later I was wide awake and on my feet, diving for cover. The towel fell from my waist, and I stood behind an armchair, as naked as the day I was born.
Two creatures of Forgetful hell’s spawn, pulled straight from old nightmares—or, more likely, from the Degradation—stood on the writing desk by the window. Flames licked at the polished oak and blazed across the walls and carpet.
“Hello, boys,” I snarled, flexing the star cuffs. If I broke my thumbs perhaps I could slip free…
Both demons folded identical pairs of near-transparent wings into the thick, rotten hide on their backs. They were thin creatures, of wasted leathery skin stretched over elongated bones. The grey skin around their mouths pulled tautly across two rows of sharp fangs which dripped viscous yellow pus. It stank to high-heaven, and I was across the room.
“Your betrayal ends tonight, Hale,”
said the one on my left, Tweedledum. Its voice was worse than screeching harpies. The sound ran down my spine.
I scoffed. During the height of the Tome Wars, I’d wiped the floor with demonic dipshits twice as ugly as these two. Will or not, I was unafraid.
Tweedledee roared, its grip tightening around a familiar sword. The hilt was wrapped in leather, the blade sharp, cruelly curved, and imbued with unknown enchanted strengths. I’d burnt a layer of flesh off my hand once, touching a sword like that.
“Calm down,” I said, somewhat reasonably. Smoke gathered in the air as the flames consumed the walls. “Who, or what, sent you?”
Two pairs of eyes, lifeless black orbs, stared at me with what could have been mirth, if the matching grins that stretched their jaws even wider were any indication. Small spirals of dead Void light shone within those orbs.
“We were sent by one who has taken you seriously.”
I took a few slow steps away from the corner of the room, toward the door. Both demons tensed as if they were about to strike. Despite my best efforts, my damned thumbs wouldn’t snap. The door had to be locked—I was a prisoner, after all. Where were my jailers?
“Give me a name so I know who to track down and gut like a fish.”
“You have been judged accountable, Shadowless.”
That was about as useful as a… “You know what? I don’t even care.” I raised my voice. “I sure hope that the Knights guarding my room don’t come in here anytime soon!”
Nothing. Nada.
The smoke finally triggered the fire alarms, and the sprinklers overhead burst to life in a rain of cold water accompanied by a piercing siren. Perfect.
I saw my chance. I turned and ran at the door and, wonder of wonders, the knob turned in my hand. Dripping wet and without a towel, I threw the door open as if my life depended on it and hurled myself into the hallway.