“Is it in English?”
“It is in whatever language the reader knows. However, it does not preclude understanding.”
“Like the Bible.”
“Perhaps so, only the Bible is tucked in the margins of this work, if you can even find it. Even then, it is pure, lacking the faulty translations. It would be the truth direct.”
“I see.”
“Do you, my friend?”
Arquebus pushed his Columbincus into the Book of Farn’s keyhole. The lock shuddered, and then unlatched. Slowly, the book fanned open, the brooch suspended above the pages. Steam arose from the binding as the volume filled the air with perfumed knowledge. Harris inhaled. No fear. It enraptured him. He watched as images emerged from the pages. He saw that the ceiling’s astronomical gazetteer had been replaced by a different map — a fuzzy chandelier of geographical features.
He grinned, the Cartisforium’s spice captivating him. Arquebus nodded like a professor about to deliver a geography lecture — an orientation to a new land.
“What you have learned thus far,” he said, “can be gathered on a pinhead and thrown to the wind.” He stretched his arms out and closed his eyes. “Behold the Book of Farn. Savor its lessons and listen to the guides. Remember and recall it all, because your life might depend upon it.”
Harris touched his own Columbincus, which vibrated. He kept his hand over the sigil of the Eye and the two wavy lines in an attempt to amplify his newborn knowledge. The magic began and Harris Cartwright was plunged into this new world with renewed illusion. After all, illusion was the only life he knew.
Chapter Eleven
The Book of Farn
1
Harris’ heart beat fast as the royal faces appeared successively — men and women crowned with sparkling caps and diadems. At first, fleeting forms, they registered no significance. Still, he reached out to touch them; a useless exercise, because these specters were merely impressions representing Farn’s history.
“Behold Great Farn,” Arquebus intoned. “Nine houses — Electors all, and graceful Memers and Sceptas and Seneschals. Regal houses — each to their lands and cities. Each controlling the bridles of government, the protectors of the Primordius Centrum.”
Harris didn’t absorb it. Instead, his attentions were glued on the map as it descended — a vast circle cuffed by mountains and seas — fertile lands between the cities and citadels, except for a desert which edged on the margins, abutting the mountains. The map turned and from each sector came the faces again, matching their appropriate place. Through the cloud, Harris saw Arquebus, his hands raised, pointing to the chart — the map that lent its name to the Cartisforium.
Harris saw a sprawling, shimmering red city, spires aloft and towers flaring, edged by a lava lake. Trees blazed, but despite the conflagration, their flowers blossomed unhindered. Above the embers arose a fantasy dome, rosy in the sunslight. Rockets jetted above the din and the aroma of roasts and stews and baking wafted up Harris’ nose. Then, casting up from the fiery lake, were the projections of a man and woman, draped in a crimson cascade, which rippled from head to toe like boughs infested with fire ants.
“Cheelum, the Elector of Volcanium, keeper of the sacred fire,” Arquebus said, his tone ample, swelling with heraldry.
The ruler of Volcanium clarified. His face dripped wax, satiny across his cheeks, highlighting silver eyes. Rubies and bloodstones festooned his gown. His crown, a spike shooting flame, pointed to the suns. He bowed toward Harris, who fumbled returning the gesture, unsure whether a projection would care for such courtesies. However, he didn’t wish to vex a man on fire. Volcanium’s Memer stood within Cheelum’s flickering flame — a thin wick of a woman, dripping vermilion oil lacquered to her chin. Three flaming Seneschals preened nearby. They played cards and continued their gambling as the map continued to turn.
The fire world gave way to one of water. A tsunami rolled over the scene, crashing into a lighthouse, which shone across cottages and rough dwellings. The shore teemed with boats, the fishermen casting nets. From the distance, an azure crystalline bubble approached. Golden pylons shielded it from the surge. As the world turned, land arose forming a vast dune. A palace sat astride the sands, its walls wending down to a bustling oasis. Then, rain. Harris felt the spray kiss his chin and forehead.
“Yama, the Elector of Aquilium, watcher of the watery realm,” Arquebus announced.
A willowy man’s projection appeared, wearing a thin cord of seaweed and naught else. His crown, a conch shell; his skin, olive; his beard, white and split into two strands, glistening with sea-foam, each blown in a different direction. At his feet clung the crest of his palace, a hump capped by a nautilus shell. His Memer appeared. She, as naked as her husband, embraced modesty only with a well-placed scallop shell at a strategic anatomical point. Three Sceptas peeked from behind her. They giggled, and then revealed long flowing hair, which changed colors as they combed it with snapping razor clams.
The Elector of Aquilium lifted a dazzling turquoise chalice, toasting Harris. Harris nodded, and then Yama drank, foam escaping his mouth, his Memer catching it in her hands and spraying water over the Sceptas, as if baptizing them. Harris thought them a pleasant family, although Aquilium recalled a nudist colony. He could live with that, but probably not with the rain and the riptide.
Rotation again, the watery world dissolving into steam billows. Harris squinted, but he saw naught but clouds. The more he stared, the more he had the sensation of flying. He was aloft in the sky. A flock of swallows funneled nearby — a winged ballet. They wafted over an emerging scene — clouds spiked with gables and marshmallow roofs, like cakes at a county fair. The populace feathered about their business. The birds settled on a colossal statue, which over lorded the town. As Harris watched, the statue twitched, sending the flock into another funnel — a skyward pas de deux.
“Yunoli, the Elector of Aolium, champion of the air,” Arquebus chanted.
The Elector transformed into a twister, his green cloak disrupting wherever he touched down. His cape, dotted with stars, was an elegant astral garment. The city below, thousands of flets, was now blown about like leaves in the wind — lily pads adrift on a lake. On each flet, an igloo-shaped dwelling set. These clustered onto the gingerbread cloudland roofs, while Yunoli shook his cloak. Harris caught an aroma of fresh mint, as if Aolium was hung with deodorizers. The Elector laughed, his Memer joining him in flight. Together they swept over pasturelands and roofs, blowing the flets hysterically. More than a few citizens slipped from their igloos, falling through the clouds to their death. The Sceptas arrived on the backs of swans. The Elector greeted them by balling into a pink nimbus cloud and blowing over their heads, setting them adrift. The Elector and his Memer laughed, a joke enjoyed before planting in the valley again, two statues waiting for another swallow flock to scare.
The map turned faster now. The sky darkened quickly. The ground thickened, the pastures giving way to a rugged landscape peppered by belching smokestacks and broiling furnaces. The city, no longer an idyllic place, had one ponderous purpose, its signatures brick and cobbled, gray and dingy. People hauled and toted and carried and dragged. The dwellings were row houses. Coal dust and oil slicks mucked the streets. Larger buildings came into view. One was eye-catching ugly — a cube lined with factory windows, standing fifty stories high, surrounded by ancillary buildings. Beyond, a range of hills slept and, beyond those, open pits. Cranes and ‘dozers rolled about the landscape. Harris choked, covering his mouth in his tunic collar. From the pit emerged a rugged man in a sooty robe. But it wasn’t a robe, but hide, charred by kilns and caked in coal dust. The man’s lips, chapped and black, poked through crusted grime.
“Yeholu, the Elector of Terrastrium, master digger of Farn,” Arquebus croaked.
This Elector was different from the others, as if he had drawn the Hephaestian role. Repulsive. Still, Harris couldn’t see Yeholu beneath the muck — an earth denizen and director of an industrial rea
lm. However, industry was essential, Harris supposed, and thus this lord of coal.
The Memer crawled low to the ground, sidling to Yeholu’s feet. There were others, but Harris couldn’t discerned them clearly. Were they Sceptas or Seneschals beneath the muck? The family promenaded, dog packs encircling them. Each family member cracked a whip often. How could this bunch slip into other worlds to draw their due? Their appearance would have clogged the front pages of the Alien Invasion Daily. Harris rejoiced when the map turned, because the Elector farted, and nothing was so vile in this world or any other.
The landscape leveled smoothly, and then arose, opening onto a valley, cuffed by a circumferential ridge — stadium time. Would the home team be taking the field? The amphitheater, dotted with brick and mortar monoliths, was geometrically pleasing and symmetrical. It suggested to Harris a set of toy blocks.
“Sestanum, the Elector of Protractus, dean of science,” Arquebus said, sharply, and then coughed to get Harris’ attention.
Harris shrugged, but then noticed the Elector, who was expertly camouflaged. Sestanum, a splinter man, shot up like bamboo from a tetrahedron, which spun at the center of the amphitheater. The geometric world burst with activity, silver disks transporting citizens over moving walkways and through connection tubes. What their business was Harris didn’t know, but assumed it was scientific and inventive by the city’s state. Sestanum revealed himself, more insect than human, his eyes bugged, his headpiece spiked and was adorned with slinkies. His cloak stiffly fanned like a vintage Cadillac. He operated a remote control, aiming at random objects which spun and flashed and buzzed and fussed. He aimed it a Harris, who ducked, averting mischief.
Sestanum’s Memer, a short stocky woman, bounced on a pogo stick around her lord. Three Seneschals sprang over the tetrahedron, pointing remotes in their father’s wake, shutting down the spinning and the flashing and the buzzing and the fuss. Harris was glad he hadn’t been drawn into this bizarre realm, although he supposed Seneschals were incubi rather than succubae when visiting other worlds. Where do they keep the werewolves and zombies, he mused. And what about the vampires? As the map turned again, he might discover.
Mist covered the land — not airy stuff or watery spray, not choking coal dust, but a purple veil hiding everything. Harris saw no image, no building, no shape, nor natural formation. Just mist — violet and fuchsia mist. Then wisps flitted in and out. Soon they flickered, strengthening until a gray-cloaked haggard specter appeared, wielding a great staff. Faceless, it could have been the grim reaper but for the staff instead of a scythe.
“Dunaliski, the Elector of Magus, grand wizard of Farn,” Arquebus whispered.
The wizard waved his staff through the mist. Harris tried to discern features, but even the gray cloak was . . . well, gray and at times formless as if Dunaliski and the mist came from the same unreferenced cloth. This Elector seemed Memerless. No Sceptas or Seneschals either. However, Harris heard murmurs — a woman’s voice, and then birdcalls — crows, perhaps — maybe, ravens. This family sublimated form, hiding in an arcane world. This realm teemed with invisible citizenry.
Suddenly, Dunaliski vanished, mist whirling where he had stood. Harris was beset with a deep, abiding dread. He couldn’t tell why. Vacancy stole his senses. He wanted to flee the Cartisforium. The map couldn’t turn fast enough.
“Turn, already. Turn,” he muttered.
It complied, a Cathedral emerging through the mist — a magnificent Gothic edifice, gargoyled and buttressed. However, its spire was a pagoda and a minaret protruded from the apse. A medieval city clung to its skirts, a town with eclectic architecture — western sloppy to Oriental fantasy, like the play Harris had been asked to learn.
“Lododi, the Elector of Pontifrax, Archbishop of Farn,” Arquebus intoned.
Hymns resounded — a mass perhaps, but not in Latin. Perhaps Chinese. Harris couldn’t tell. However, he did know a priest when he saw one. Lododi, invested and frocked in priestly garb, sported a miter cap reserved for a Cardinal, only in bright blue instead of scarlet. The Elector blessed the citizenry, which appeared in miniature, clustering in piazzas and about shrines, knees bent, hands crossing or clapping or performing shaker rituals. More startling, the Memer, as if an archbishop could have one, was clad like the town slut. A whore by any other name would do as well. She filled the holy coffers with more than prayers to the Virgin. One shiver from her ample chest could endow a bishopric.
Three Seneschals lurked by Lododi’s vestments, stewards of the collection plate. Harris inhaled incense rising from the censer. He almost crossed himself, then recalled he was Presbyterian and didn’t know one Chinese word. The choir burst into a loud Gloria, followed by a Benedictus — Amen. Then the map moved on, but Harris wished it hadn’t, because the Ecclesiastical world faded fast and the world grew darker still.
Harris began to sweat — cold sweat, as if something evil this way came. The ground flattened, writhing with creepy crawlers — thousands of spidery legs, as if the graves of the nine worlds opened.
“Divert your eyes,” Arquebus said.
However, before Harris could obey, he saw the next Elector — a misshapen beast — the epitome of Caliban with a monster’s mug — one eye, a cleft nose and a horn growing from his forehead. He carried black armor, which he scarcely attempted to don. Something evil came.
2
“Grimakadarian, the Elector of Zin,” Arquebus shuddered. “Keeper of Darkness.”
Harris turned his face away, and then his back. He heard agonizing screams and torturous cries, at first distant, and then directly at hand, filling his heart and soul with dread. The shouts were painful, every chalkboard ever scratched by unworldly fingernails. Harris felt compelled to look, but, unlike Lot’s wife or Orpheus on ascending from hell, he fought the urge, focusing his attention on the stained-glass windows. However, he smelled a vile stench. This was the inferno, which touched his own outland — a hop, skip and jump away from here, after all.
Harris trembled and cursed Arquebus, who stopped the map to impress upon him the luck of being drawn into Montjoy and not into the realm of Zin. It worked.
The cacophony lessened. The pandemonium faded. So did the stench. Slowly, Harris turned, hoping his pirouette wasn’t premature. Arquebus clapped. Harris was pleasantly surprised. Before him spread a great metropolis, draping across three hills and cuffed by a desert on one side and a sea on the other. The place bustled and buzzed, overlooked by a stately house — a palace he recognized from his Cabriolin ride.
“Kuriakis, the Elector of Montjoy, rector Maximus and provost for the arts,” Arquebus said, proudly.
Harris sighed. Why he felt pride, he couldn’t tell, particularly since he set his prime objective to escape Montjoy’s grip. However, after witnessing eight other options, Montjoy was the pick of the basket. The image of the great man himself, Kuriakis, sitting on his steed Nightmare was projected on this scene like a poster in a travel agency. Saddled on a milk-white unicorn, Joella the Fair, his Memer sat like nature’s handmaiden. This was Harris’ first sighting of the mother of Montjoy — as stunning and comely as Kuriakis was regal. Reclining on ottomans, the three Sceptas mimed their stained-glass poses.
Harris sighed. His tour of Farn was complete. Little did he know.
“So this is Great Farn in all its glory,” he spouted to Arquebus.
“Know them all,” Arquebus replied. “Hear their names and take them to heart and memory.”
Arquebus placed his hands upon his heart, and then closed his eyes, reciting:
“Nine houses rule the world of Farn
Balanced in perpetuum
About Primordius Centrum —
Volcanium holds the firebrands,
Aquilium has the waters’ keep,
In Aolium’s realm the air depends,
While Terrastrium mines the earthen halls.
Montjoy lifts the orb of art,
Protractus totes and measures all.
And Magus wields
the wands of time
While Pontifrax chants the holy rites
To draw the portals twain aligned
Into Zin and Zacker’s care,
Beyond the darkest brightest lair.”
“Nine houses,” Harris muttered.
“Nine Elector houses,” Arquebus echoed. “Cheelum, the fire lord of Volcanium, Yama, the water lord of Aquilium, Yunoli, the ruler of the sky in Aolium, and Yeholu, the earth liege at Terrastrium. Art is in our lord, Kuriakis’ charge, while science lies with Sestanum of Protractus. The miraculous belongs to Dunaliski of Magus, while rites are Lododi of Pontifrax's domain. Zin and Zacker hold the keys to the Primordius Centrum — the portal binding all in light and darkness. Nine houses in Farn — each to its realm and purpose.”
Harris glided beside the map as it continued to rotate.
“Fire, water, air and earth,” he said.
Belmundus (The Farn Trilogy Book 1) Page 12