Worldshaper

by Edward Willett

  “I have no idea,” Karl whispered back. He glanced at me. “Does it look familiar?”

  “Nothing I’ve seen outside of TV shows, movies, computer games, and the occasional nightmare.”

  “Nightmare,” he repeated. He looked forward again. “I wonder . . .”

  “We’re being followed,” I said then, just in case Karl was deaf or had suddenly been struck dumb, in the stupid, not speechless, sense of the word.

  “I know.” He quit musing and resumed moving, climbing the stairs, the flashlight casting a circle of illumination on the floor ahead of him.

  I followed, trailing one hand along the damp bricks as we ascended, wondering who had gone to all the trouble of lining the tunnel with them—and why. Why cover what must already be walls of solid rock with brick? Sure, it was more aesthetic, but who would see? What I’d said to Karl was absolutely true: there was something . . . fake . . . about all this, as though it were just a set for an old episode of Doctor Who—a program that had always loved tunnels—or one of those original-series Star Trek episodes where the gang found itself in a quasi-medieval castle that was really a projection of some powerful alien intelligence.

  It also reminded me of the overblown tunnel I had Shaped to give Karl access to the Portal at Snakebite Mine. But I hadn’t Shaped this. Had I?

  The steps climbed straight ahead, never deviating left or right. Every thirty feet or so there was a landing, a flat spot, where we could catch our breath before continuing the climb. At the third such landing we encountered something new: a statue, of the heroic male nude variety, a variation on Michelangelo’s David, perhaps, although this “David” had the head of a ram, and held a sword in one hand and a decapitated human head in the other. Also, unlike David, this nude male was . . . aroused. Impressively so.

  “Um,” I said, looking at the statue with disquiet. “What is that?”

  “No idea,” Karl said. “Not from your world?”

  “Nothing I’ve ever seen,” I said. “Although parts of it are familiar.” I winced in the dark. Considering what the most immediately noticeable part of the statue was, that hadn’t come out at all the way I’d meant it to sound.

  “Parts of it.” Karl said thoughtfully. “Then I think know what it is. It’s a chimera. In fact,” he looked around at the brick walls, “I think this whole island is a chimera.”

  “A chimera,” I protested, “is a fire-breathing female monster from Greek mythology.” I tried to remember pictures I’d seen of them. “Um . . . I think they usually have a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail.” I nodded at the priapic statue. “That has none of those things and is most definitely not female.”

  “Chimera in the generic, rather than the mythological, sense,” Karl said. “Something formed from bits of one thing, bits of another. In this case, elements from the world we are about to enter, combined with elements from your world. It is my hypothesis that this island is, in a sense, a world of its own: Shaped, not consciously but subconsciously, by both you and the Shaper of the next world over. I believe this island exists in both worlds, but is not fully of either.”

  “So, this statue could be Michelangelo’s David,” I said slowly, “with bits from the next Shaper’s imagination grafted onto it.” His rather disturbing imagination.

  “Or simply bits of his or her world,” Karl said. “Or bits from your subconscious . . . which, based on your own comments, and that tunnel you Shaped at the mine, may be where this endless staircase came from, as well.” He turned away from the disquieting sculpture and resumed climbing.

  It was perhaps slightly reassuring that whatever that statue represented was unlikely to be part of the world we hoped to enter. On the other hand, if that thing properly represented the miniworld of the island, which we were penetrating more and more deeply, it wasn’t reassuring at all.

  It was even less reassuring when we reached the next landing, and the next after that, and the next after that. Each had similar statues: a nude winged woman with pendulous breasts, the feet of a hawk, bat wings, and the head of a fly, holding a squalling baby by one heel. A slim preteen boy with snakes for arms and a mouth in his stomach, and below that . . .

  Well, never mind. I quit looking at them in detail after that one. If any of that had come from my subconscious, I was one sick puppy.

  At about the seventh landing, where there were two nightmarish statues either engaged in an extremely deviant sexual act or devouring each other alive (or both), the tunnel split into three. One branch continued up, one went left, and the one to our right went a short distance and ended in a wooden door, reinforced and barred with rusted iron. From the other side of that door came the sound of scratching: long, slow, grating noises, like giant claws being drawn through the wood. Karl looked at it thoughtfully. “Interesting.”

  “I think you mean terrifying.” I started up the next set of steps, but he put a hand on my arm.

  “No,” he said.

  “No?” I looked over my shoulder. We had heard nothing from below us since that initial burst of voices, but surely our pursuers were almost to the brick-lined stairs by now, if not already on them and climbing toward us. “We—you—need to get that Portal open.”

  “You hardly have to tell me that,” he said. “However, that way,” he nodded up the stairs, “is not the most direct route to where I can perform that task.” He nodded at the barred door. “That way is.”

  I stared at the door. “But . . . there’s something monstrous on the other side of it.”

  “Is there?”

  “Can’t you hear it?”

  “I hear a scratching noise,” Karl said. “But I cannot be certain what is causing it.”

  At that precise moment, a howl echoed from the corridor to our left, a long, moaning wail that sent shivers down my spine, as though the mostly wolflike contours of the sound had been mixed with a good dollop of fingernails on a blackboard. My heart skipped a beat. “We’ve got to get out of here! Up is the only safe way.”

  “Up seems to be the only safe way. Just because we cannot hear anything coming from that tunnel does not mean it is safe. But in any event, it may not lead where we need to go. Whereas I am certain that this closed door does. Here, hold this.” He handed me his flashlight, then pulled the pistol from his pocket, popped out the clip with practiced ease, took a quick look, and snapped it back into place. “Two shots left.” He looked down the steps, keeping the pistol loose in his right hand. “Not enough for who’s following us.” He nodded at the closed door. “But it might be enough for whatever’s behind that.”

  The howl sounded again, closer, and then I heard something from somewhere down the long staircase . . . a muffled curse, it had sounded like. Our pursuers were getting close. I groaned. “What’s the plan?”

  “You open the door, I shoot whatever is behind it if I must, we go through the door, we close the door, we continue, and we hope that our human pursuers make the same unwarranted assumption you did about the best route, and continue climbing.”

  I swallowed. It did nothing to slow my racing heart. “Fine.” I switched the flashlight to my left hand, took a deep breath, and then strode toward the door. I touched the iron of the bar securing it, and found it so cold the sweat on my hands froze to it, stinging my skin. I took another deep breath, and then lifted the bar.

  The scratching paused, then redoubled.

  The door had a griplike handle, the kind with a thumb plate you push down to release the latch. It had a keyhole, too. Could it be locked as well as barred? The continuing scratching almost made me hope so.

  I touched the handle. It, too was colder than ice.

  I pushed my thumb down. The latch clicked.

  The scratching stopped.

  I took a deep breath, trying to prepare myself for whatever might be on the other side of the door, ready to leap back as whatever it was
came roaring out . . . then pulled the door open.

  There was nothing on the other side of it at all: just another dark tunnel.

  Karl raised an eyebrow. “Anticlimactic,” he said. “But not entirely unexpected.”

  I felt both relieved and cheated. “What the hell?” I shone the flashlight through the door.

  Another tunnel, another set of steps leading up, a few feet beyond the door, at right angles to the ones we had been climbing. No decorative brick adorned the stone walls, but a thin layer of glistening mud covered the floor between the door and the stairs. Nothing marred its smooth surface: no footprints, no animal tracks. Whatever had made the scratching noise had left no sign of its presence. Had it been imaginary?

  The howl sounded behind us, very close now. Maybe whatever was making that sound was imaginary, too—but maybe not.

  The howling drove us through the door. I turned at once and pulled it shut behind us. To my delight, on this side of the door a key rested in the keyhole. I locked the door, then pocketed the key. It was only then that I saw the deep scars in the door, four parallel marks, clawed through the wood, over and over again. I looked at the ground. The only marks there were from our feet.

  “Perhaps we should keep climbing?” Karl said.

  I heard muffled voices outside the door. The howl sounded again. Shouts and curses rang out—and then gunfire, shockingly loud even through the thick wood—which might not be thick enough to stop a bullet, come to think of it. I turned away and hurried toward the stairs. “Absolutely!”

  We started up. As before, there were landings every twenty steps or so, but these (thankfully) had no statues. At the third landing, the steps turned left, so we were climbing once more in the same direction as before, toward the island’s interior.

  I had little breath for talking and my legs and side ached, but I was also sorely puzzled. “So, you think we . . . me and the Shaper in the next world over . . . created this island jointly, but not consciously?”

  “That is my belief,” Karl said. To my annoyance, he didn’t sound out of breath at all. “I think it was Shaped by your subconscious: the things you fear, without reason; the things you think, without regard for propriety or rationality; the . . .”

  “‘The Monsters from the Id.’”

  “Id?”

  “Um . . . Sigmund Freud? By way of Forbidden Planet?” But that, of course, just earned me a blank look. Of course, I thought. Freud was early twentieth century, like The Wizard of Oz. Too late for our Mr. Yatsar. And that curious comment earlier about Charles Dickens’ live performance of A Christmas Carol . . . clearly, Karl had left the First World sometime in the late nineteenth century. Which made him well over a century old. Which was . . . puzzling. Or disturbing. Or both.

  Not the time, I thought. Back to the terror at hand. “So, whatever made the scratching sounds wasn’t real.” I frowned. “Except it was, because it left marks on the door.” I frowned harder. “But no footprints.”

  “Rationality has no place in a place created without rationality,” Karl said, which had the sound of an aphorism. I could almost see it on a (rather lame) motivational poster. I wondered how many worlds he had entered in which rationality had no place . . . and how many I would have to visit, too. Based on this island, such worlds might not be very pleasant.

  “Whoever is chasing us shot at something,” I said, the next time we paused at a landing for breath. “It was real to them.”

  “Perhaps. Or maybe they shot at shadows, at what they feared or imagined was there, rather than anything with corporeal reality.”

  I looked down the stairs. “I didn’t hear the door open behind us. Do you think they’ve gone up the central stairs?”

  “Possibly,” Karl said. “Or possibly they are extremely skilled at keeping quiet as they climb.” He gave me a pointed look. “Unlike us.” He took a long, slow breath, as though perhaps, just perhaps, he was willing to admit to being ever-so-slightly fatigued, and resumed climbing.

  I took a few deep, ragged breaths (because I had admitted I was more than slightly fatigued at roughly the third landing of the first set of stairs) and followed him.

  The end came abruptly. What looked like just another landing ahead of us carried on into the darkness, a long, flat tunnel. And at the end of it that tunnel . . .

  . . . a light.

  Talk about a cliché, I thought.

  “We’re very close,” Karl said. He looked behind us. “I think we may have evaded them.”

  “Then let’s hurry!” I strode forward.

  “Wait!” Karl cried, but too late.

  Between the light of the flashlight and the light ahead, I couldn’t see the floor of the tunnel.

  The other reason I couldn’t see the floor of the tunnel was that it wasn’t there. I took a long step . . . and tumbled forward into darkness.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THE ADVERSARY STARED at the young man standing nervously before him. “I beg your pardon?”

  “The island. Where they found the boat. It doesn’t exist.”

  “Explain yourself. Clearly it exists, or they wouldn’t have found it.”

  “Sorry, Mr. Gegner. I don’t mean it isn’t physically there, because of course it is. What I mean is, it’s not on our charts. Or any other charts. Or any satellite images.”

  The Adversary had no interest in the peculiarities of the Shaping of this world, or any other, except in so far as it served his interests. Still, this was . . . unexpected. “But it registers to the senses?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The Adversary looked pointedly at the screens that were supposed to be showing him video feeds from the many cameras carried by his cadre, and the naval personnel accompanying them. “Then why is not visible to me?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Gegner,” the man said. “Everything seems to be working, but . . . no images are getting through. We can hear them, but we can’t see them.”

  “Curious,” the Adversary said. “And annoying. Very well. What are they telling us?”

  “They found the owner of Amazon, the wrecked sailboat,” the young man said. “She told them the other two had gone inland. Helicopters circumnavigated the island using fog-penetrating radar, but didn’t spot them. However, they did find an opening into an extensive network of caves. It seems clear Yatsar and Keys entered them. Your . . . um . . .”

  “Cadre,” the Adversary supplied.

  “Yes, sir. Your cadre entered the cave, with two Marines. The rest of the ground force is working its way around the island in both directions. The helicopters are standing by.”

  “And what do the forces inside the mountain report?”

  “Nothing, sir. No contact since they entered. Too much stone for a signal to penetrate.”

  “I see. Very well, then, how fast could I be transported to this island?”

  The young man blinked. “Sir?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You want to go in person?”

  “I believe I just indicated that.”

  “Well . . . several hours, sir. I can’t be more precise off the top of my head.”

  “Make the arrangements.”

  “Uh . . . yes, sir.”

  The young man scurried off. The Adversary looked at the still-blank screens. The mysterious island was clearly the location for the next Portal. Either Yatsar had already opened it, or he would soon.

  Whatever would happen on the island would certainly have happened before the Adversary could get there. But a new Portal would mean a new world to conquer, as soon as this one was fully under his control—as it would be very soon. Either Shawna Keys would die, or she would escape into a new world, and he could Shape this as he pleased. While her escape would pose new challenges, the setback would only be temporary.

  Wherever Karl Yatsar and Shawna Keys traveled in th
e Labyrinth, the Adversary would follow.

  * * *

  I fell, and kept falling, screaming as I plummeted through darkness. I only stopped screaming because I ran out of air, and when I did, I heard Karl shout, “Shawna! Open your eyes!”

  How could he still be so close? I was still falling. Worse, I was still accelerating.

  I had gone skydiving once. The adrenaline rush had been amazing. Back on the ground, I had chattered about it for hours. But the thing about skydiving is that once you’ve reached terminal velocity, you stop accelerating. You’re still falling, but you don’t feel like you’re falling. As they say, it’s not the falling that kills you, it’s the sudden deceleration at the bottom.

  But now . . . I could still feel that sensation of falling, that initial terrifying plunge. The sensation wasn’t stopping, not at all, but I’d been falling for seconds . . .

  I was facing down into darkness, but I still held the flashlight, gripped so tightly in my hand my knuckles ached. Karl’s voice had come from behind me, and not very far behind me, at that. I twisted my head to the left, and pointed the flashlight in that direction—and saw a wall of stone, which wasn’t moving. I twisted around further, my body rotating as I did so, and saw Karl not six feet above me, standing on the edge of the precipice from which I had fallen . . . was still falling, for even though I could see I wasn’t really falling, the sensation was still there, making my heart race, my body sweat. It was all I could do not to scream again.

  “What’s happening?” I cried. Oh, all right, squeaked.

  “Hang on,” Karl said. He paused. “Perhaps not the best choice of words,” he added apologetically. Then he disappeared.