Riddle of the Seven Realms

by Lyndon Hardy

  Suddenly the huge clockworks at the water’s edge sounded in a deep resonant gong. Kestrel heard a cry of surprise. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flurry of motion at the next subnode in line. The clock struck a second time. In a blur, his sword spun from his hand high into the air. Simultaneously he felt the pressure release from his neck.

  Kestrel craned his head upward to see his sword and three others arch in a complex swirl and then fall back toward the earth. Spinning with precision, the pommel of one fell back into his grip, just as the first had left it. With a scrape of skin, the pressure returned to the side of his neck. The four swords had been interchanged.

  The clock sounded again, and the lieutenant choked out a startled cry. Kestrel saw his thin face contort in puzzlement and then dissolve into one of the reflective’s grins. Other cries sounded from all around the node, and then Kestrel felt the pressure on his neck suddenly release. He looked into the face of the warrior across from him and blinked at the sudden change. The smile was gone and the round cheeks somehow thinned into the gaunt expression of the lieutenant. At the edge of his vision, he saw the two remaining warriors in unison disengage from one another and turn to strike Kestrel and the one he now faced from the side.

  Kestrel fumbled to turn and meet the new threat. Somehow, his adversary had been switched. The one who faced him fought on the same side. It was just as Abel had tried to explain. The striking of the clock mixed up things spatially in strange ways—even the inner beings between the rotators and reflectives were being transformed!

  Kestrel struggled to rotate clockwise. But as he did, the warrior who faced him strained to move in the opposite direction. For what seemed like an eternity, they fought against one another, while the two reflectives smoothly pirouetted and prepared to strike.

  On the third gong of the clock, Kestrel heard more cries from around the oasis. First one and then two other rotators suddenly were catapulted into the air. Their bodies were wrenched into unnatural trajectories and hurled toward the horizon with breathtaking force. Almost instantly, reflectives sailed into view and landed in the spots vacated by their foes. At several of the subnodes, the ratio of fighters was shifted to a definite disadvantage for the rotators. Through the tumult of battle, Kestrel saw Astron near the clock key, standing frozen with a blade woodenly in front, not able to fend off thrusts that were being aimed at the demon from both left and right.

  The clock sounded again. This time Kestrel recognized Phoebe’s shriek intermingled with the rest. He looked skyward and saw her and three reflectives from her subnode rise into the air and then vanish like the rest. Kestrel pushed against the lieutenant straining in the reflective’s body and looked hastily back at the sword now being drawn back to strike at his midsection. For an instant, he hesitated, uncertain whether to stop the resistance or to assist the lieutenant’s efforts instead, whirling back clockwise, hoping to rotate completely and meet the attack after a full circle.

  Before Kestrel could decide, he heard the clock strike a note deeper than before. A sudden blur of nausea welled up within him. The scene before his eyes shimmered and then turned to a blurry gray. He felt a wrenching disorientation and then a sudden rush of heat as if he had a great fever. His body seemed suddenly strange and he staggered and almost fell; the resistance to his motion had been suddenly changed.

  The blur dissolved. Kestrel blinked at what he saw. No longer was he at a subnode with three other warriors but near the clock itself. Reflectives on either side were drawing their swords, arms back across their bodies, preparing for deep thrusts toward his chest. He held his own sword pointed directly out in front, unable to move to one side or the other. He saw a net of tiny scales on the back of his hand and running up his forearm into his sleeve. Somehow he was conscious of a stubble of minute bristly hairs in the web of his fingers and between his toes.

  Kestrel looked back across the node and saw what looked like his image still locked in synchrony with the lieutenant trying to ward off the attack coming from the side.

  It could not be possible! Kestrel tried to deny the thought, but the feeling of all of his senses could not be denied.

  “Astron,” he called across the sand. “Somehow we have been transposed like the others. Do not fight the lieutenant. Turn clockwise with him and swing totally about.”

  But he need not have bothered. With the final gong of the clock, Kestrel saw his body vault up into the air and then streak away like the ones before. Grimly he forced his attention back to how he was going to ward off the two reflectives with a sword that was frozen in position in his alien left hand.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Demonlust

  ASTRON cautiously felt the sand under the strange fingertips. First there had been the blurring and transformation so unlike a journey between the realms. And then the flight away from the fighting to this deserted node. He must still his stembrain before he could think further.

  Astron tried to flip down his membranes and then frowned in annoyance when they would not come. He shut his eyes and tried to ignore the unsatisfying blackness. Mentally, he reached for the panic that should be upwelling and concentrated on making it still.

  His eyes blinked open. He looked about, surprised. There was no panic, no rumble of the base of his skull. He felt an internal discomfort from the flight and jarring landing, and his heart seemed to throb for no apparent reason, but otherwise he was in complete control of his thoughts.

  Astron looked about puzzled. He saw Phoebe stagger to standing at the subnode to the left but noticed no other occupants of the oasis. Dimly, he remembered a reflective passing him halfway in his flight, going the other way. He released the sword he still held in his left hand and absently watched it fall at his side. His nose wrinkled as he saw small curly hairs on the back of his hand and arm, providing a wiry cover to a pale, smooth skin.

  Kestrel, he thought. What had the human shouted about the transpositions that the reflectives were effecting with the huge clock of the chronoids? He held both arms up and then touched the smoothness of his forehead. He ran a finger over the more or less even row of teeth in his mouth and, reaching to his back, felt no knobs where the degenerate wing stubs should have been.

  He breathed deeply and marveled at the feeling of the air coursing in and out of his lungs. A growl sounded in his stomach and a pleasant longing teased at his mind. Unbidden images of meat sizzling on a spit and the smell of fresh bread flitted, real and compelling.

  “Oh, Kestrel, thank the random factors that you are here,” Phoebe shouted as she ran to his subnode. “The blood and fighting with all that overpowering restraint was far worse than the alchemist’s foundry. We are lucky to have survived.”

  He was not Kestrel, Astron thought. Words of denial started to form in his throat but his tongue felt strange and he only managed a cough instead.

  “What is it?” Phoebe asked as she held wide her arms and stepped forward, beckoning.

  Astron motioned for her to stop and took a cautious step backward.

  “What is it?” Phoebe repeated. “Tell me everything is all right. I can stand no more chaos and surprise.”

  Astron looked at the tension etched deeply in Phoebe’s face. The events had been unsettling, perhaps more so to a human than to one of his own kind. Whatever was decided upon to do next, he would certainly need her aid. And he knew from struggles through the flame in eons past how fragile was the will to survive. It was perhaps best to explain all that had happened at a better time. He wrinkled his nose and then slowly began to speak. The tenor of the first words startled him, but he held all the tiny muscles that were alive in his face rigidly taut.

  “Do not be concerned.” He measured his words carefully. “For the moment, we are safe. Take a minute to bring your stembr—your feelings under control and then we can proceed.”

  “But we are separated from the others. What are we to do?”

  “To the origin,” Astron said quickly. His thoughts seemed to rush forward wi
thout the benefit of deliberation. “There is no change in our intent. There you will summon a demon to get us home.”

  Phoebe pulled a folded map from a pocket in her gown and began to open it, but then shrugged. “It is kind that you still show faith in my ability, Kestrel,” she said softly with eyes lowered, “but in truth, the reality of my abilities has become clearer with each passing moment. Reaching the origin may be all well and good; but without Nimbia fully recovered, there is little point for such a journey.” She looked out over the sands back in the direction from which they had come. “And how can we proceed the way we want when these forces of symmetry flip us from node to node? Without Astron, how do we stand a chance? He seemed to have a knack for figuring out these mathematical things.”

  “Yes, the devil,” Astron said grimly. He shook his head to keep his thoughts straight. “Once a djinn is under your command, you can task him to soar over this desert until he finds the others. But if the demon were here, the first thing he would do is—” Astron stopped and for the first time looked critically about the oasis.

  It was very much like all the rest, a quiet circular pool of water surrounded by six trees at the vertices of a hexagon. Strewn all about, however, was the debris left by the reflectives who had occupied it before the battle and the transformations. At the adjacent subnode on the left stood a pile of branches hacked from the treetops to make soft beds. Denuded branches and an axe were tossed in a heap nearby. At the next subnode around the periphery was one of the devices of the chronoids in obvious disrepair. Stacks of gears, springs, and ticking escapements were scattered about a nearly empty framework. Directly across the pond, three or four thick leather vests stood in a heap next to a pile of eyelets, buckles, and sewing thongs. Two nicked and rusting swords rested against the tree behind. A ring of stones outlined the cooking pit at the subnode adjacent to the armory and the remains of parchment maps gently stirred at the fifth. Just like the rotators, the reflectives carefully organized their camps so as to maximize their freedom from the compelling forces of symmetry.

  “From the looks of things this node served as a camp for perhaps a dozen,” Phoebe said.

  “And yet when the battle began, evidently it was occupied only by two,” Astron replied. “Otherwise now you and I would not be the only occupants.” He waved his arm out over the bleached sands. “The rest must have dispersed to yet other nodes and then converged back to where the rotators attacked. Perhaps it had something to do with the working of the devices of the chronoids.”

  He looked over the disarray a second time. “One thing is for sure. There is more than enough here to break up the symmetries between the subnodes for the two of us. We can move about with comparative ease.”

  Astron’s voice trailed off. The glimmer of an idea popped into his mind. Slowly he paced off the two longest and straightest tree branches and dragged them around the periphery to the dismantled device of the chronoids. There he rummaged through the stacks of debris until he found six gear wheels of approximately the same size.

  “What are you doing?” Phoebe called out.

  Astron ignored the question. “Go across to the armory and start cutting the vests into leather strips. We will concern ourselves about your abilities later. For now, let us get this thing built before some part of my mind is able to convince me otherwise.”

  Astron unbuckled the harness from his chest with a deep sigh. His muscles ached. What had been the pleasant longing in his stomach had turned into an insistent discomfort. He looked over his shoulder in the dimming daylight and saw Phoebe unfastening the half-dozen belts that held her to the long wooden frame. She had not complained during the entire trek, and surely the strains on her body must have been the same as his.

  “Go and gather some fruits.” He waved at the node that was before them. “I will pull the engine the rest of the way.”

  Astron looked at the deserted node and then back at the horizon the way they had came. The node that he and Phoebe had been transported to was well out of sight. Even though a good portion of the time had been consumed in constructing the bizarre apparatus that fettered them, they still had managed to walk from one node to another. After a rest, they might be able to manage two moves, rather than one.

  Astron ducked under the branch on his left and smiled at his handiwork. The felled tree branches had been bound by leather straps to form the irregular framework of a long box. If stood on end, it would tower three times the height of a mundane djinn. At front and rear, a row of gears from the device of the chronoids formed a framework for the smaller branches jammed between their teeth. Like giant rolling pins, they spread the weight across the sand and allowed Phoebe and him to push the contraption along the bleached path from one node to the next. Sometimes, with a burst of energy, they were able to sprint forward against their harnesses and then raise their feet and coast for a few moments before friction brought them to a halt.

  Far more important than the practicalities, however, were the other additions to the craft. Five more gear wheels of odd sizes were hung along the sides at haphazard positions. Here and there, small clusters of greenery sprouted at odd angles. The rusted swords all pointed skyward from three of the four top corners and the cooking pots swung from the cross struts. Even though it gave them some difficulty in steering, the harnesses which bound them to the frame were offset from one another. Astron was near the center of the very front while Phoebe was halfway to the rear and nearly touching the left side.

  At first Phoebe had protested adding all the extra weight and the number of belts that she had to wrap around her waist. But when the first tug of the symmetries had come and passed over them with barely a ripple she understood the intent. They were not two single individuals but coupled together as one. Their engine was in all probability unlike anything else in the realm. Totally unique, there was no increase in symmetry in moving it to a particular node or switching it with anything else. They could move between nodes as they chose without constraints or regard to the actions of others.

  “There is ripe fruit enough that we can provision for several moves,” Phoebe said as she returned to the engine. She untied several of the canisters still gently swinging from the frame and beckoned Astron to the subnode where she had laid out a cloth.

  Astron finished pulling the engine to the water’s edge and then sat down across from the meal that Phoebe had prepared. With a dedicated savagery that surprised himself, he began to gobble down the slices almost as fast as Phoebe could prepare them, hardly bothering to sprinkle on the flours from the canisters that balanced the meal. Only dimly was he aware of the cool pleasure of the juices that dripped over his hands or the tartness that tingled in his mouth.

  When he was finally done, he leaned backward with a feeling of contentment totally unlike anything he had experienced before. He shook his head in wonder. The sensations were quite pleasurable ones, but such a weakness it must be for humans. Without food and drink, their thoughts would soon be driven to distraction; they would abandon all reason, just as if their minds were seized by the most powerful of stembrains. And unlike his own kind, there would be no hope for remaining in control.

  Astron looked at Phoebe through half-closed eyes. There was much risk in this quest for his prince and yet much reward as well. He had learned things that no other cataloguer could have even suspected. Even Palodad probably had no notion of the concept of hunger or of how it truly tugged at one’s will.

  Phoebe smiled back at Astron and swept the remains of their meal aside. Deftly, she closed the distance between them and put her hand up to touch Astron’s cheek. “I wonder about the others, Kestrel,” she said, “but there is some advantage for the events as they have happened. For the first time in a very long while, we are alone.”

  Phoebe slid her hand behind Astron’s neck and put her lips to his. Astron choked in a moment of confusion but words would not come. He found his arms reaching around Phoebe and pulling her even closer to him. As he did, he felt a str
ange new feeling course through his body. He sucked in his breath at the intensity of it.

  He was keenly aware of the softness of her back under the palms of his hands, even though her jerkin was in between. The press of her body tightened everywhere it touched. Without thinking, he maneuvered so that the pleasure of it would be greater. Astron felt his pulse quicken and his breath grow more shallow.

  Desire swirled through his thoughts until only the tiniest ember of rationality remained. This was not like the duty for the broodmothers in any way at all. No cataloguer had dreamed of its potency, of that he was quite sure.

  “You know that it does not matter,” Phoebe said softly. “It does not matter what happens, Kestrel, just so long as we are together.”

  Kestrel. The name jarred to a halt in Astron’s mind and did not go away. It was Kestrel that Phoebe was giving herself to, and not a wingless demon who could not weave. It should be the woodcutter’s pleasure and not his.

  Astron looked into Phoebe’s expectant eyes in confusion. It would be Kestrel’s body, nonetheless. Her sensations would be the same. And he would catalogue yet another experience of humankind. It was his duty to his prince. Astron licked his lips. The yearning was crisp and sharp, like the most brilliant sodium flame. Perhaps if it was not the first time, if he were more jaded to the senses of men, it would feel different, but he was feeling the rush of emotion now and must decide what to do.

  “It is a compelling pleasure,” Astron heard himself mumble. “In the realm of men, pleasure is regarded as a great good.”

  “The pleasure is because it is you,” Phoebe whispered.

  How much of what he was feeling was merely the construction of the bodies of men? Astron wondered. How much was some part of Kestrel that still lurked around the edges of his thoughts? What happened exactly when two awarenesses were switched, anyway? Was Kestrel, in the body of a demon, experiencing the same temptations with Nimbia? Did the woodcutter still remember his human emotions and seek to gratify them as best he could?