by T. C. Rypel
Gonji stepped forward from a foothold on nothingness and warily took the man’s hand, as it waved to enjoin speed. He felt an odd, euphoric sense of weightlessness. The sorcerous environs around him seemed to burn off, from front to rear, like the silk of the Moonspinner, torn back like a coverlet from off the firm vista he now felt and saw under and around him, a sweet green world that reminded him of the hills of his youth.
He was on an idyllic, rolling greensward, the grasses soft and lush beneath his feet. His chest swelled with air formed of pure, welcoming scents, his eyes luxuriating in its beauty. On an impulse he removed his boots and tabi to walk barefoot on the graceful pasture-land.
He was beyond elation to see the other survivors, and he bowed to them without speaking, then knelt and offered a prayer of thanks to all merciful kami.
A bloody and begrimed Sergeant Orozco hobbled up and clapped him on the shoulder. “This bugger says he’s got something that will help Buey’s wounds—si, he’s alive! Brought here before us. He’s…he’s not too sure about Simon, though.”
Still bedazzled by the wonder of it all, Gonji slowly acclimated himself. The he moved to help comfort the badly injured Simon and Buey. Ahmed and Luigi greeted him in quiet, shared amazement as they attended the pair’s wounds. These two seemed in less than perfect health themselves, numerous cuts and bruises marking them. Yet all appeared grateful to be alive and a bit apprehensive as to what this place might be. Lola, too, was with them, though she seemed in shock, seated on the grass with her knees drawn up close.
Then he saw what she was staring at: The bodies of their allies Herrmann, Gonzaga, Patel, and Cardenas lay in a decorous row a short distance away.
And then Valentina came through the doorway into nothingness, Shem conducting her, smiling at her. The erstwhile whore now appeared as a conquering queen, framed as she was in the waxing and waning vision of the spherical arena, which finally vanished from their sight for the last time. Gonji strained for a final memory-branding glimpse of the great tilting ground.
Valentina met all their eyes evenly. “No,” she said quietly, “it’s not what you think, thank God.” She forced a shaky smile. Tacit understanding permeated the group. All knew her meaning, though it had never been discussed.
“Well,” Orozco began, summoning his facile humor, “that’s one helluva tribute to how popular you used to be!”
“That’s not funny in the least, Carlos,” she said, though not too reproachfully.
The sergeant persisted. “Well, I meant no disrespect. We all do battle in our own way. We’re all just happy that you didn’t have to—I mean, being that they were the dead and all—”
“Shut up, Carlos,” Gonji said, straightening the sergeant’s impish smile. The samurai watched Valentina walk past them, strangely changed, transcendent, as if occupying some new plane of existence beyond even this realm to which they’d been drawn.
“All this carnage—blood,” Shem was intoning gravely, “upsetting the serenity of the Architect-god’s favorite meadow. This is all quite unsettling to me. You can thank Valentina for your survival. I would have been unaware of your peril—and frankly indifferent to it, of necessity—had it not been for her concern over you. We will speak later.”
He walked off, his step heavy, as if burdened. Gonji watched him stroll with a jaundiced scowl, having already taken a disliking to this reluctant savior.
Shem returned the sentiment later, when Gonji insisted they bury the four dead warriors at a spot he chose near the broken arch. Valentina attempted to mediate the disagreement, but Gonji struck up an icy, adamant resolve, and there was no dissuading him. The grave markers were placed unobtrusively, and the samurai showed a tight-lipped Shem that no angle of view was marred.
Their wounds were treated with the healing blossoms, though Shem himself would not approach Simon, explaining that his empathy with the accursed man’s contentious spirit was a terrifying experience in emotional violence. And it was further discovered that the blossoms had no effect on Simon’s wounds, though his body’s superhuman resiliency did at once begin to manifest their own healing effects.
Buey, however, miraculously responded to the medicinal blossoms’ efficacy, and the big warrior was in cheerful spirits before the azure, cloud-studded sky was thrice dimmed by placid twilight shadows.
“Have you ever strewn these blossoms on some battlefield you peeked into?” Gonji asked Shem as he handled one of them that day.
“I don’t peek into battlefields,” Shem replied indignantly. “Most wounds could be avoided by applying understanding at their source—the aggressive spirit. And these curatives are not plentiful. They were created with the hope that they would rarely need to be used.”
Gonji seemed dissatisfied with what sounded to him like a specious hypothesis.
They were conducted to a hot springs, where they laved themselves in the cleansing, therapeutic waters, which exerted a magical effect on both body and spirit. At nightfall, under starry heavens and bright scudding clouds that sped past a silver gibbous moon, they would slake their thirst on a golden nectar and gorge themselves with a variety of fruits and vegetables, both familiar and strange. And Shem would discuss with them his knowledge of the system of cosmic spheres; parallel, concentric worlds, of which their earth was but one.
“Once Arcadia was freely accessible to all. Everything Paradise contained was free. But rapacious powers sought to control its resources, to lord over their fellows, to enslave them and be gods. That was their greatest sin, you know, their aspiration to godhood. And they made chaos of Paradise. Now there is no unifying element, no law for all the spheres. There is a ruling body on the central world that seeks to restore order, but only under their control. So even their efforts represent a compromise that was never intended. One day it will all be reclaimed, but not soon. I fear your idealistic Knights Templars will be disappointed. All men share a destiny that is unknowable in the present state.”
“How?” Gonji asked. “How will it all be restored?”
“Someday there will be unity of purpose,” Shem answered simply.
“And where and when will that all start?” Orozco piped in, taking up the thread of Gonji’s argument.
“Not with me, friend warrior, if that is your implication. I have a responsibility to remain detached, to exert no additional force to complicate the already complex disorder. My function is to observe and record, to tender my considered advice to my superiors in the High Order of Ianitori Probers.”
“Like your colleague the giant?” Gonji said. “He spoke as you do, yet he interfered in the affairs of us lesser beings.”
“There are even Probers who violate their responsibility,” Shem argued.
“Yet all must make a clear moral choice,” Simon cut in, his arresting voice commanding their attention from where he propped himself up on an elbow. He was heavily bandaged again and in considerable pain, but he showed an unaccustomed interest in the discussion.
Shem averted his eyes from the lycanthrope. “My moral choice must be made on a sublime level you could not hope to appreciate.”
Gonji clucked his tongue. “Listen, friend, we deal with the manifestations of evil on our—pathetically submerged level—and you, on yours. But I see you doing little to aid in the battle.”
“You have a disquieting way of interpreting existence in military terms.”
“So I do,” Gonji agreed, “and it’s not without validity. You can open and close doorways at will, can you not?”
Shem shrugged. “I do have such localized power. I cannot prevent passage, however, to those who have stumbled onto the secret. And there are many of those, representing all parts of an absolute moral spectrum. At best I can obscure the positions of gateways to the keys within my immediate influence. That way I may help to…confuse and limit their illicit usage.”
> “You could have prevented the evil forces from taking control of the diamond configuration of gateways Domingo Negro discovered. You could search among your keys to learn whether the evil of Akryllon still exists among us. You—”
Shem was shaking his head as if admonishing a child. “Believe me, you cannot know what you ask. From what you have told me, I gather that your witch was right about one thing. Her primitive spells—and there are spheres where such magic has been refined to science—they did reveal to her that the system of spheres is concentric. There is a core-world—this is part of it. And your fatuous mathematician—forgive me, I realize he lies dead, yonder—at least he realized that there was a link between what one world calls sorcery and another, science. But there was no ‘configuration of Evil.’ Your diamond was merely a random figure, granted importance by way of the unenlightened mind’s awe at the assumed simple perfection of symmetry. As for Akryllon…it exists, to be sure. It exists as a stain on the cosmic structure. More power-mongers. They move to and fro through the keys as if they knew Arcadia’s meaning. Arrogant fools.”
“That is why the witch sent us Pablo Cardenas,” Ahmed Il-Mohar was reasoning aloud, his gaze fixed on a distant star. “She knew that his knowledge and hers were connected in some larger framework.”
But Gonji was listening only to his own angry thoughts. “One should not speak so disparagingly of the dead,” he told Shem with barely disguised hostility. “They may have fought in ignorance, but what matters in the end is that they fought.” He rose and strode off into the surrounding hills, to reestablish control of his center.
* * * *
Ahmed found him where he slept the next morning, at the edge of a sylvan valley of unparalleled beauty. A warm sun evaporated the dew, whose sparkle returned to the glory of a majestic sky of a most lively blue.
“Our strange friend seems to think he can locate Genoa by means of his hand manipulations,” Ahmed said with a trace of amusement. “Very handy fellow. Perhaps he will even deign to conduct you there.”
Gonji peered at him closely. “You’re not going?”
Ahmed stroked his bearded chin. “As I once said, I would I only face more hostility in Austria. The Turks command the Barbary States, and my adopted faith will render me an unwelcome guest in my own homeland. Shem has told me of a place very much like Algiers, where artisans are needed and strangers are welcomed. It is all quite intoxicating, you know? His presumptuous posturing is a bit infectious. I may even presume to do some proselytizing of my own. He says many beliefs are tolerated there, unlike so many spheres. I can be a Knight of Wonder after all, without the violent opposition you face.” Ahmed smiled, then he spoke with the lights of unknown shores reflected from his eyes. “Shem says he has heard that in other places they also believe that the Architect-god’s Son came among men—as a carpenter. That seems to make a curious logical sense in the context, does it not? Fascinating, is it not? Speaking with him does lend one a broader perspective.” He returned to their surroundings once more, as if from a reverie. “Oh, and—Lola will accompany me.”
“Lola?” Gonji was perplexed. “Challenging the unknown?”
The Morisco shook his head. “Running from the known. A small gift of divine symmetry, I do not wonder: I seek a new start. She seeks forgetfulness. Together we shall help each other adjust. Then—?” The Morisco shrugged.
* * * *
Sergeant Orozco, Buey, and Luigi Leone located Gonji in a secluded dell the next morning. The samurai glistened with a fine film of sweat. Stripped to his breechcloth, he drove himself through a long series of kata. They held their place, allowing him to finish his practice at scintillating ken-jutsu draws.
He paused to greet them, then continued with flexibility exercises and ju-jutsu gyrations as he spoke with his comrades.
“We’re ready to leave when you are,” Orozco apprised him. “This godling thinks he can put us on our way. I get the feeling it’s more out of good riddance than any wish to help.”
Gonji nodded curtly. “We upset his contemplative paradise.”
“Soon I’ll be strong enough to take you on again, eh, Kyooshi?” Buey said with an impish grin, flexing his arms, and Gonji smiled to hear the Ox use Captain Salguero’s pet word.
“Hai, you best be good and strong. Leone-san, I see his magic grove couldn’t restore your lost eye.”
Luigi’s hand went to his eye patch. “Now, you know—you must be a witch, like they say. Shem talked to me about a place where they sometimes can—replace a—”
Gonji’s eyes narrowed. He saw Leone turn uncharacteristically reflective. Shem’s spell had seemed to captivate him, as well.
“And you’re going?”
Leone snapped back to reality. “Me? Hell, no. I aim to see what you’re about. I lost this eye in good faith, you know. This is what it cost me to prove my mettle. Brigands back off when they see this. I’d just have to start fighting ’em again, if I—”
“It would improve your fencing to have two eyes again,” Gonji pressed, testing his resolve.
“Ah, horseshit. It was never any good anyway. Just give me a good pistol and plenty of powder and shot.”
The samurai looked them over, bowing to them at last. “Domo arigato, my friends. Your company will be much appreciated. Though I do understand…it will be difficult for any of us to live our lives in quite the same way again.”
* * * *
Simon’s shadow disturbed the space between the lengthening shades of the trees as night whispered in the distant slumbering hills.
“You’re looking well,” Gonji said when he’d recovered from the abrupt jolting out of his meditation. The lycanthrope had begun to move with his accustomed stealth, and as usual he’d withdrawn again from the others’ company.
“Let’s leave this place,” he said. “I don’t like this drowsiness it induces.”
“I know what you mean,” Gonji replied. “It weakens one’s guard. Too much of this, and—Has this ‘Prober’ also offered you a refuge to run to? An escape from the battles of life?”
Simon sighed. “Something—he said something about a lifeless land I might roam on the Night of Chains.”
“Mmm.” Gonji looked toward the distant arch where most of the others reclined, their voices lilting in the twilight. They heard Buey’s uproarious laughter. And Orozco’s.
“It was thoughtful of him,” Simon added. “It seems I do offend his fastidious sensibilities.”
“Is he also a heathen?” Gonji probed, igniting an old fuse.
“In his fashion. Not like some I know. When we’re back in France, I’m going to haul your infidel ass off to chapel one day. Just to see whether you really will burst into flames.”
“On the Night of Chains?” Gonji shot back.
“That’s not a fit subject for humor.” Simon turned away.
“Hell, it is time to leave this place. Everyone’s getting as touchy as you. And what is this business about France you’ve said, more than once? I hate France, you know that.”
“I said I needed help with something. Remember? You promised yours.”
Gonji watched him lope off into the dell, dimly recalling a promise made on the road.
* * * *
“Your witch was wrong, you see,” Shem declared, strolling beside Gonji with hands behind his back. “Attitudes and policies, not evil armies, are what most commonly bleed through the gateways to enslave the beings who inhabit the spheres. Much too difficult to combat by sword. The powers that vie for control are far too complex to explain to you. I must admit I do not understand it very well myself.”
“That’s a rare admission for you,” Gonji observed with a trace of sarcasm. “I’m glad to hear it. Actually, I believe the sword is a valid weapon with which to begin the fight against universal evil. And one honorably begins
where he perceives a single wrong. Or he does nothing, as you do, and the wrong grows into a larger one, feeding on everything around it.”
Shem seemed indignant, but he pondered this for a space, and Gonji went on with a dawning sense of irony. “Actually, I’m my own worst argument for what I’m saying. I seem to have gained nothing here. Stasis. I’ve placed the dead back in their graves. In fact, I’ve lost. I’ve laid good companions beside them.”
“That depends on what you count as gain,” Shem said in a comforting voice. “You have given me much. Rarely can a man from the common spheres enhance a Prober’s existence. You have influenced me to see certain things…differently. Listen to me—I have been speaking with the others. They hold you in the highest esteem. They have helped me understand your aims. And there are certain predicted events, expected in this Age…” Shem drifted off, then quickly regained focus. “Perhaps it does matter when one being reaches in a hand to pluck a single living truth from a drowning pool of deceit. I cannot help you. You must fight the noisy, dirty battles of your own world. The dark powers in Akryllon may have seen your future, and it may be that that future crosses purposes with their own.
“But out of your insistent arguments, I have framed this decision: I can attempt to influence the governing of the passages through the gateways, the use of the keys. That much I will try. I shall devise a modern codex for the spheres and present it to the other Probers. You have…quite possibly succeeded in making me a renegade like yourself. Albeit, on a larger scale.”
Shem smiled with more sincerity than Gonji had seen before. “And you’ve given me something else.”
“What else?” Gonji’s brow creased.
“The company of Valentina.”
* * * *
“Do you think it would be wonderful if all people were born with wings?” Valentina asked in serene humor as she laid the wrapped infant wygyll on the grass beneath the arch.