Now I never would.
I reached in through the driver’s-side window and disengaged the parking break. I withdrew my arm as the SUV started to roll.
It didn’t pick up a lot of speed before it reached the end of the road, but it didn’t need a lot. It rolled off the edge, slid into the water, and vanished with very little fuss at all, although a few bubbles surfaced and big, slow ripples rolled out across the still water, disrupting the moon’s reflection.
I shouldered my pack, which I’d set on the ground; Karl already wore his. He’d tucked the spare pistol into his pack. For the first time, I buckled on the gun belt that had come with my sheriff’s deputy uniform. Then I looked ahead to where the road, after running alongside the quarry, turned and climbed the hill beyond. It looked like a very big hill, on foot, and there were still a couple of miles to go beyond it before we reached the dude ranch and the sneeze-inducing means of transportation we hoped to find there.
Karl set off without a word. As I followed him, a thought percolated up. “If I can Shape people,” I said to the back of his head, “why can’t I Shape myself, make it so I’m not allergic to these horses we hope to find?”
“Because you can only Shape things that are part of this world,” Karl said, without looking around.
“But surely I’m part of this world.”
“No, you are not. You are from the First World. You cannot Shape the Adversary’s minions either, remember. Or the Adversary. Nor could you Shape me, which is why I was able to funnel your power rather than turning into a frog, or whatever else you had planned.”
“Doesn’t seem fair,” I muttered.
“Fairness has nothing to do with it. If you drop something heavy on your foot and break a toe, that is neither fair nor unfair. Gravity just is. Shaped by God, if you believe in God. The laws of the Labyrinth are just as immutable.”
“Also Shaped by God?”
“A question for theologians,” Karl said, “should one of them ever find out the Labyrinth exists.”
I quit talking after that, as the slope steepened and I discovered I needed all my breath, and it had just been established I couldn’t Shape myself into a much fitter person. But I still had enough oxygen to think—barely—and once we were heading downhill into the next, shallower, valley, I said, “But from what you’ve said, there are worlds where natural laws are very different. Like, when I was handed this world,” man, these conversations are getting weird, “I could have Shaped it so that, say, superheroes exist . . . couldn’t I?”
“I am not certain what you mean by ‘superheroes,’” Karl said.
“People with extraordinary powers. People who can fly, or bend steel bars, or lift giant boulders.”
“Like Hercules.”
“More or less, but without the demigod backstory.”
“Yes,” Karl said. “You could.”
“So, in a world like that, could I have made myself a superhero?”
Karl sighed. “No. Again, because you cannot Shape yourself. These ‘superheroes’ you speak of aren’t possible in the First World. Things from the First World, such as yourself, are real, in a way the things in the Labyrinth are not. You have no control over anything from the First World, including yourself.”
“So if we do finally get into another world,” I said, “even if it’s a world with dragons and unicorns and wizards, where magic is real, the Shaper will be as ordinary as I am?”
“You just made a quarry appear out of nowhere,” Karl said. “That is hardly ordinary.”
“You know what I mean. Even if a Shaper Shaped a world where sorcery is real, she wouldn’t be a sorceress herself.”
“That is correct.”
“And a lot of Shapers have very little power left after they’ve Shaped their worlds.”
“Also correct.”
“I see.” I fell silent, thinking about how vulnerable those Shapers would be to the Adversary: they might have crafted the world in which they lived, but if they’d used up all their power, they could be as easily slain as the most ordinary of their world’s denizens. As I would have been if I had not managed to make time skip a beat during the attack on the Human Bean, despite knowing nothing of what I truly was.
We were climbing again, so I focused on heavy breathing for the next few minutes. Once the slope eased, as we neared its crest, I panted, “How many?”
“What?” Karl said.
“How many worlds have you already passed through? You wouldn’t answer me the last time I asked.”
Karl stopped and turned to look at me, his face pale in the moonlight, his eyes shadowed by his brows. “I have passed through twenty-nine worlds, counting this one. In none of them did I find anyone with the power you displayed in the Human Bean. I closed the Portals behind me, but I could not seal them. I am in many ways relieved the Adversary chose to pursue me instead of simply going back through all those worlds and claiming them as his own. One reason I wanted so badly to destroy the Portal at the mine was to protect those worlds from him.”
“Twenty-nine?” I stared at him. “But how many are there?”
“According to Ygrair, eight hundred and twenty-four Shapers have entered the Labyrinth since we . . . since she opened it to the First World. Some of those Shapers may have died, of course.”
“Does that destroy their worlds?”
“Ygrair is uncertain,” Karl said, “and therefore so am I. What is certain is that, if a Shaper dies, his or her world can no longer be entered. It is possible the world continues, but is rendered inaccessible. Since it is inaccessible, there is no way for us to know.”
“And you intend to take me to all the worlds that are still accessible?”
“I intend to take you to as many as is necessary for you to do what Ygrair needs done,” Karl said.
“And how will you know when that is?” I pressed.
“I will know.” He turned away. “Now save your breath. I believe we will find this ‘dude’ ranch on the other side of this ridge.”
I shut up, but I wasn’t through with questions. Not by a long shot.
A new valley opened up below us as we topped the ridge. A river wound through it, glinting here and there in the moonlight, clearly visible because, although more dark woods rose on the far side, on this side of the stream a large swathe of land had been cleared, the resulting fields enclosed by split rail fences. At the south end of the cleared land clustered several buildings: a three-story log house, four long, low log structures that had the look of sleeping quarters, about a dozen individual cabins, three small sheds, and a giant red-and-white barn. Yard lights burned throughout the compound, but no light showed in the big house or any of the other buildings, which wasn’t too surprising at . . . I checked my watch . . . three-thirty in the morning. When I saw the time, my lurking fatigue hit me over the head like a rubber mallet. I yawned hugely, but there was no prospect of sleep anytime soon.
There had to be people down there to maintain the buildings and look after the horses, but if we were lucky, Bow and Arrow Ranch, like Candle Lake Resort, was closed for the season, and there would be no tourists in those cabins. The single car in sight, parked up against the house, made that seem likely.
“It may look like we’re in the middle of nowhere, but horses are valuable,” I pointed out to Karl. “There’s going to be security of some kind. Motion sensors. Lights. Alarms.”
Karl raised a Spockian eyebrow at me.
I groaned. “But I don’t know what I’m doing! When I hid our tracks, it caused a snowstorm and an avalanche. If I try to cut the power I’m likely to start a fire or something.”
“You do not need to cut the power,” Karl said. “You’re right, tampering with things like that is fraught with potential dangers. That is because it is not so much that you Shape the world to your desires, as that the world Shapes itself to meet you
r desires.”
“Very nice,” I said. “I think I read that on a motivational poster once.”
Karl ignored that: no doubt it had gone over his head. “The world changes itself according to the rules that govern it, to achieve the end you as its Shaper desire. I did not see what happened when you made that quarry, but I would guess that some deep subterranean cavern is no longer there, that the rock that vanished from the quarry filled it. A lake nearby is probably much diminished, to provide the water. And so on.”
“And all this helps me deactivate whatever security is in place down at Bow and Arrow Ranch . . . how?”
“It doesn’t. I’m telling you why you should not deactivate the security. There are too many variables, and it will waste more of your great, but not unlimited, power. Stick to what you know, what you have already proved will work. Rather than deactivate the security, deactivate the security guard, or guards. Shape him, or them, so they assume any alarms we trigger are nothing, in fact, to be alarmed about.”
“But I have to see them to do that,” I said.
“Don’t you think triggering an alarm will make them appear?”
I sighed. “So, in order to get by the security system, we first have to trigger the security system?”
He nodded.
“What if I fail?”
“I still have a weapon.”
I stiffened. “No! No killing. These are people of my world. I’m responsible for them. I’ve already gotten two killed. I won’t have any others killed.”
“Then Shape carefully,” Karl said.
* * *
“‘Shape carefully,’ he says,” I muttered to myself a few minutes later, as I crouched in the bushes just outside the split rail fence nearest the house. “Like I’m an expert now.” I turned my head toward the barn. Karl must be about to make his move. He intended to break into the barn, snapping off the padlock on the barn door using a shovel we’d found leaning up against an outbuilding. Maybe we’re wrong, I thought as I waited for something to happen. Maybe there isn’t any security after—
Lights flashed on all over the ranch, and a raucous jangling sounded inside the house. In the sudden flood of illumination, I saw Karl, still ten feet from the barn, shovel in hand: there were motion sensors on the outside of the buildings as well as on the inside, apparently.
More lights snapped on inside the house. I saw a silhouette against a venetian blind, moving toward the front door. It swung open, and a burly, bearded man in dark-blue pajamas stepped out onto the porch, a shotgun clenched in his hands. He turned toward the barn and saw Karl, and the shotgun snapped up. “Hold it right there!” he bellowed. “Move a muscle and you’ll be picking buckshot out of your ass for a year.” He took the steps down from the porch two at a time, landing on the grass in his bare feet . . .
I reached out with my Shaping ability, trying to tell him Karl was a friend, this was all just a misunderstanding, there was no need to be upset, he’d known Karl was coming, he’d just forgotten, he’d promised Karl two horses . . .
The man blinked and lowered the shotgun. “Wait a minute . . . Karl, you old sidewinder, is that you?”
I relaxed. Best of all, I’d felt only a twinge of a headache.
And then the second man came out, younger, wearing only boxers, a rifle in his hands. He caught me by surprise. Before I could gather my wits, he shouted, “Fucking horse thief!” at Karl, and raised his rifle . . .
. . . and the first man, roaring, spun and fired his shotgun into the younger man’s face. His head exploded in a spray of brains and bone, and his body fell limply backward, thudded against the wall, and slid lifeless to the porch beneath the Rorschach splatter of his own blood on the front door.
I heard screaming, then realized it was my own. The shotgun swung toward me, and I suddenly remembered I had done nothing about Shaping the bearded man to not see me as a threat. “Bitch!” he bellowed at me. “You killed Johnny!” The shotgun came up—
—and another gun fired from my right.
The bearded man twisted his head to look down at the hole in his left side. Then, as blood started to pour from it, he dropped the shotgun. He fell to his knees, one hand going to the wound, and then toppled facedown and motionless into the grass.
I had almost nothing in my stomach. I dropped onto my hands and knees and retched anyway, bringing up mucus and bitter bile. Not again! The thought ran over and over in my head. Not again!
Karl came over to me. He waited until I was done gagging, then held out his hand to help me to my feet. “I did it again,” I said as he pulled me upright. My heart pounded and the taste in my mouth was as foul as my humor. “Two men dead, because I tried to Shape them . . .” I suddenly turned and shoved him away from me so hard he staggered back and almost fell. “You knew that would happen!”
Karl straightened, wincing. “I did not. The first Shaping went well. He would have simply given us the horses. It was the unexpected appearance of the second man that brought about catastrophe.”
“No,” I said. “I brought about catastrophe. This fucking ability you value so much . . . it’s not a gift, it’s a curse. It destroys people.”
“Your clumsiness destroys people.” Karl’s voice, cold and remorseless, felt like a slap across my face. “The fact you have forgotten everything Ygrair taught you destroys people. You must learn—relearn, since you once had it—better control. You must think through all possibilities before you Shape. You should have been prepared for the possibility of more than one man in the house. You should have been prepared to Shape any other man who appeared as you did the first. Because you failed to think ahead, your Shaping of the first man caused him to see his friend as an enemy, someone who was going to harm me, who you had so successfully convinced him was someone he had to help at all costs. When you suddenly drew attention to yourself by screaming, the cognitive dissonance you had set up in his brain twisted his perception. Unable to accept that he had just killed his friend, he transferred that guilt to you. In that instant, he believed he had just witnessed you killing Johnny. He would have killed you next if I had not taken action.”
I clenched my shaking hands into fists and took deep breaths, trying to regain some semblance of calm. “You could have warned me. You could have helped me figure out what to do, how to plan for contingencies.”
“You are the Shaper, not I,” Karl said. “The quickest way for you to learn is by mistakes such as these. You will not make the same mistake again.”
“No,” I said. “I’ll make a new one. And maybe more people will die. Maybe me.” I glared at him, and spat the next words. “Maybe you.”
“If it is me,” Karl said, “it will be you, as well, because without me you cannot leave this world, and the Adversary will kill you soon enough. And if it is you and not me, I will grieve, but then I will simply renew my search. Somewhere, in some other world, there may yet be another Shaper with your power, someone else who can fulfill Ygrair’s task.”
Well, that was even more chilling than the combination of freezing mountain air and the shock of two violent deaths. I’m expendable, I thought, staring at Karl, who looked back steadily, face calm, jaw set, not a hint of doubt in his expression. In a way, I already knew it, from things he’d said earlier, but he had never put it quite so baldly before, so that it felt like a dash of ice water in my face. Valuable, but not invaluable. If it comes down to letting me die, or him escaping into the next world in the Labyrinth . . . he’ll let me die.
“Let’s get those fucking horses,” I said, and since Karl didn’t react to my use of obscenity any more than he had to my last use of it a minute earlier, he clearly didn’t know just how angry and upset I had to be to use it . . . which meant he didn’t really know me well at all.
Any more than I, apparently, knew him.
FOURTEEN
DESPITE MY DRAMATIC and profane commitment to the
procurement of mounts, the first thing we did wasn’t “get those fucking horses” but get some new non-cop clothes, although that involved going into the house, which involved going past the horror on the front step. I closed my eyes and held my breath and dashed past while Karl held open the door.
The house was homey in a very masculine sort of way: lots of leather and antlers and dirty dishes. One again, we found clothes that fit us perfectly, I in the room I presumed had belonged to the dead man on the porch, Karl in the room of the man who had shot him. Dressed in jeans, a red flannel shirt, hiking boots, and a warm sheepskin coat, and leaving the gun belt I’d never wanted in the first place on the dead man’s bed, I joined Karl outside again, though I left through the back door and not the front. He was dressed almost identically to me, except his coat was black leather, like the duster he’d worn when I first saw him, but shorter and scruffier. He’d discarded his gun belt, too, but he had a pistol in each pocket, the one from the helicopter and the one from the sheriff’s deputy. “Not a coincidence the clothes fit so perfectly, is it?” I said rather sourly to him
“No,” he said. “A Shaping, though an unconscious one, on your part.”
We walked over to where we had left our packs behind a bush, and pulled them on. “Now,” Karl said, as he adjusted the straps to fit better over the leather jacket, “we will ‘get those fucking horses.’” He turned and walked away before I could see if he was smiling or not.
Could he be joking? It sounded like a joke . . .
I followed him back toward the barn, still wondering.
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