Lord of Dust

by Erme Lander

  His chest swelled as he took a deep breath, “Anyway, I had hold of your hands as it tried to take you.” A pause while he thought. “Something happened between us. I could feel my other self grabbing hold of it. It wanted to transfer to me. He wouldn’t let it.”

  “Are you sure it’s not there inside you?”

  Daniel shrugged, “I think it’s gone.” Talia peered at him as if she could look inside and he shoved her away. “I know what it was like and I haven’t got it.” Daniel’s stomach growled. He looked embarrassed, “I’m hungry.”

  “Well, I think that means you’re all right.” She looked at him straight faced until the absurdity of the noise made her giggle hysterically and he joined in, snorting. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve got some food back home.”

  Daniel grabbed for her hand and shook his clothes out, “Sounds good.” They walked through to the other room and they squinted in the daylight coming through the opening. His foot kicked something and it clattered against a piece of rubble.

  “Look, it’s your light, you must have dropped it.” Talia picked it up.

  “No, I gave it to you when you were covered. I made you carry it, I couldn’t keep your mouth clear at the same time.” He frowned, “But I’m sure you didn’t drop it.” He turned to look behind them. “That’s strange, it couldn’t have rolled that far either.”

  “Maybe it got thrown when that thing got done for?” They reached the opening and the new day. Talia turned the torch over in the light as she felt the roughness. “It’s broken.”

  “The batteries have leaked, they’ve rotted the casing.” He glanced about, the streets were quiet in the aftermath of the riots, a stillness after the orgy of violence. “Let’s eat and think about this.”

  They sat outside after cooking, neither of them wanting to stay in the dark longer than they had to. Daniel hefted the torch thoughtfully, he’d been examining it all through the meal. “This has taken longer than a night to rot. These batteries are a mess, there’s nothing left of them. I’m sure I felt him pushing away from me when we touched. Did you see him?”

  She shook her head, “I couldn’t see anything.”

  Daniel frowned in thought, “Those grey men it sent, they followed you through every time you opened a rift. What if it did the same?” He raised his head to look at Talia, “The last place we jumped to was to your mother, do you think he could be there?”

  “You think he’s in the past?” Talia’s eyes were wide.

  “That would explain why the batteries have rotted. You must have passed it over, the other me must have taken it with him and dropped it. That would explain why the grey men had my form. That’s why I’ve had those nightmares of trains going round in circles, I must have been taken by the Dust Lord in the past.” He paused, “Is it the past to me? The future? Should I even be here?”

  Talia took his hand firmly, “You are here. I brought you here.”

  “I just wish I could remember how I’d got back into my world. I’d heard that when I was found, they were still looking for the perpetrator. Mrs Pickles had seen us, do you remember?”

  “Perpet…?”

  “They thought you’d hurt me, that you were responsible for me being in the state I was in.”

  “I was… you followed me through the rift.” Talia tried to explain about seeing Daniel as a small boy.

  Daniel frowned and then began to laugh, saw Talia begin to snarl and flapped his hands to hold back the tirade of abuse. “That was Dominic you saw. My nephew. They say he looks just like me at that age.” He sobered, “I miss him.”

  “Still, it was my fault.” Talia glowered from underneath her eyebrows, determined to hold on to her grievance.

  “Yes, but you didn’t beat me up or brand me.” Daniel chuckled, “My parents weren’t happy about that, but it does explain how I saw you the first time and why you didn’t remember.” They watched the tide begin its long slow creep up towards the docks, the oily waves lapping higher. Daniel thought about the nightmare moon dragging the water along with it and another question hauled itself into the light. “Can we stop him taking me?”

  “We just did.”

  “No, I mean in the past. Let’s face it, you can travel through time, maybe we could stop your mother being taken and all that.”

  Talia stared. “But that would mean going back to where the Dust Lord was. It’s not here now, we’re safe.” She paused, “Aren’t we?”

  “Well, there’s nothing left in that cellar but if what Kenderick said was correct, I had ten years of waiting with that thing inside me. It killed so many other people, it nearly killed me. Kenderick said to you it had nearly stopped sending out grey men, so maybe it was dying when your mother arrived.” Daniel warmed in his enthusiasm. “Maybe your mother gave it that little bit of extra life so it could take me over.”

  “He had books on people from a long time ago, he told me.” Talia was still doubtful.

  “If it was that weak when it killed your mother then we might be able to stop it, we might be able to help me. Let’s go see if we can find those books, they might give us some more information.”

  Talia and Daniel walked unchallenged through the wall, finding their way by guesswork. They peered at the view through the windows and followed the trail of dessicated bodies. The green of the plateau reminded Daniel of the rioters, he hoped they were happy now. The riot had come to a natural halt, there weren’t enough people or treasure to keep the looters occupied. Every room they looked at had not just been looted but wreaked, the furniture broken and walls defaced. Daniel hoped that some of the nobs had escaped into the countryside inside the wall, there certainly weren’t any sheep on the hills at the moment. He wondered what it would take for both sides to begin working together properly.

  Another room, a dried up body lay on the floor and they both avoided it. Several doors led from the room. Daniel checked one – a study – the bookshelves half empty and a solid table pushed to the side. The remaining furnishings in both rooms were rich and colourful.

  “Daniel!”

  He stopped reaching for the books and ran into the room next door. A workroom and from Talia’s description, this must have been Kenderick’s. The heap of bones and papery flesh crumpled on the floor made him shiver. From the looks of it, it had been kicked several times, the robes barely hiding the decayed skeleton underneath. The place was a mess and not just of Talia’s making. Tools had been thrown on the floor, benches over turned and Daniel winced at the books smeared in ashes close to the fireplace. Someone had obviously tried to start a fire and got bored throwing them on.

  “My knife!” Talia pounced in glee. Daniel rolled his eyes to himself and picked up several books. He quickly realised he had the same problem as at the mill – the writing was incomprehensible.

  “What does it say?” Talia peered over his arm.

  He shrugged, “I can’t understand it.”

  “You have books at your home.”

  “Yes, but it’s written differently.”

  She looked puzzled. “This is the one I threw at him.” Talia passed over a book, the cream binding now dirty from the floor.

  “How can you tell?”

  “It has the same cover.”

  Daniel sighed at Talia’s logic and flipped through it. Dense writing surrounded hand drawn diagrams. He was reminded of the pictures he’d seen of Leonardo da Vinci’s sketch books. “Nope, nothing in here.”

  Talia dumped several other ash smeared books on the workbench and went to inspect some tools she’d dragged out from underneath. The books Daniel looked through were a joy to handle with thick pages and a hefty weight to them, however he could read them as well as Talia. He muttered a swear word and thumped them down.

  “What’s the use of writing things down if you can’t read them?” Talia rubbed her nose in boredom and disappeared to look under the workbench closest to the door. Daniel agreed and righted the chair Kenderick had been sitting in earlier. He slumped in it and
leant onto his elbow, staring at the body.

  “Hey!” She wriggled out with another book in her hand, the spine broken and torn in half, the edges were blackened and covered in soot. “This one’s buggered.” She flicked through and pointed. “Look! This must be it. That’s the grey man who came through with Mamin.” Daniel sprang up to peer over her shoulder. A line drawing showed a bulbous eyed nightmare as the Dust Lord.

  Daniel shivered and took it from her. “I still can’t read it, not that there’s much left.”

  A noise from the other room, Talia whirled, knife in hand. Daniel tried to catch her and caught empty air. She was through the part open door and gone before he could tell her to stop. A scuffle from the study and Daniel threw open the door to find Talia holding a man with half a dozen books in his arms. He wriggled, trying to keep hold of the sliding books, despite Talia’s knife under his chin.

  His face was familiar and Daniel racked his brains trying to remember where from. The weaselly man nearly impaled himself as another book slid. Daniel took pity and caught the book, dumping it on the table. Close up, he recognised him, “You worked for Igren.”

  Talia’s knife tightened as he nodded apologetically. “Only under contract, not anything else. I work for lots of people.” He tried to wring his hands while holding the books and failed.

  “Don’t kill him! He might be useful.” The scribe from the mill froze as Daniel took the rest of the books and tried to move Talia’s knife away. She allowed him to, reluctantly. He asked, “Can you read this? It’s not written in my language.”

  The scribe carefully took the remains of the book and smoothed its pages. “This is a bestiary, a book of mythical beings. I’ve seen them before, Lord Kenderick’s collection of books was one of the finest. I came to save what I could.”

  Daniel snorted. He’d more likely come to steal what he could. The scribe stared at him with pleading eyes and Daniel remembered the way he’d tried not to drop the books even with a knife under his chin. Maybe he had been telling the truth. He said curtly, “Read what you can.”

  The scribe muttered to himself, coughed and began to read, “The Grey Lord… trapped in the void forever… grey men stalk us through the trackways under the light of the… defeated in water...” He looked up, “There are a lot of words and pages missing.” He flicked to a previous page, less tattered. “There are more here on other beings. Doppelgänger, a being and his reflection can not exist in the same world without consequences.”

  Talia made a sound of contempt, “Don’t need to know about no doppelgänger. We need to know about the Lord of Dust.”

  “Wait, carry on. You could say that the grey men were my Doppelgänger. He made copies of me.” Daniel waved the scribe to continue.

  He bent his head, squinting in the uncertain light. “At a touch, one will push the other through the nearest weak point…”

  Daniel cut him off and turned to Talia, “That’s what happened, when the Grey Lord and I touched, I was right. One of us got pushed through the trackway – the weak spots in this world.” His brain raced, “And maybe that’s what happened when I touch a grey man. I feel the same explosion but maybe they can’t take it and dissolve instead.” He looked at her hopefully.

  Talia’s small face creased in thought. “It can send a grey man after me when I open a break, but I don’t think it can do it itself, otherwise it would have done it before.” The thoughts cascaded between them, barely allowing themselves to breathe in their excitement.

  “Maybe us touching forced it through.”

  “Do you think he… you went to where Mamin was?”

  “I don’t know, I felt the power surge through me and nothing after that…” Daniel stopped as he remembered their audience. The scribe was sat watching with wide eyes, all confusion as he listened to them. Daniel turned to him, “Is that all that’s written in there?”

  He shrugged, “There are a few notes made in the margins, but this part of the book is too badly damaged.” Despondent, Daniel thanked him, wondering how they could save his other self in the past. The scribe hesitated, clearly wanting to scoop the books up.

  Talia said grandly, “Take any books you want.” The scribe bowed low, and greedily began to pile the books back into his arms. “Where do I find you if I want you?” The question was casually asked. The scribe froze and stared at Talia. She smiled, “I might need a man who can read great works.”

  He straightened proudly, “Ask for Radnor. I am known hereabouts.”

  Talia nodded and smirked at Daniel’s puzzled look, “I’ve got plans for later on.”

  He rolled his eyes as he watched the scribe leave – he was never going to be able to keep up with the twists in her mind – and asked, “What are we going to do about me? There isn’t any more information in these books to help us.”

  Talia sobered, “We need to do something about Mamin too.”

  “I must be in the past, in the same time as her. You said you could feel a pathway leading back further last time. That must have been from your mother jumping. Can you get us to her time, before she came through? She might be able to tell us more if she came from an earlier time and if she doesn’t jump then we might weaken the Grey Lord further.” He quickly asked, “Well?” before he could talk himself out of it.

  “You think we could?” Her face twisted, “Would I still be me?”

  Daniel tried not to see the terrible hope in her eyes and felt sick. “I don’t know but it might unpick all this in one move. We can only try.”

  She nodded and raised her hands. Daniel went to stand behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist, ignoring the churning of his stomach. Helping Talia’s mother might help his other self, he just wished he could believe himself.

  Chapter 22

  They were half dead from lack of oxygen when they were spat out. They leant against the walls of the narrow alley and stared while they got their breath back. It was a very different Narith from the grey, tumbledown place Daniel was used to. The buildings were cleaner and in better repair, even the ever present mist felt lighter. He looked up at the walls, the windows were mostly intact, the frames still in one piece and holding glass.

  He poked Talia, “Where shall we go?”

  Talia was staring, her eyes unfocused. “I can feel the holes.” Her voice was awed. “They’re everywhere.”

  Daniel looked around, now nervous, “Can the grey men find us?”

  “Only if we open one from this side.” She shook herself like a dog, “Let’s go down to the water.”

  They walked down the hill, each silent in their own thoughts, noticing the differences. Daniel saw the lack of tension, so obvious in Talia’s time, there was still a sense of hope here. People were trying to keep their standards up, they had pride in themselves. There were still factories, he could tell by the vibrations and thumping, but they weren’t as big and there wasn’t the same sense of grinding misery.

  The city continued its march out into the bay, still standing tall, unlike in Talia’s time. No drop into the water, the street simply submerged at the tideline. Rope bridges swung from the shore to the sunken buildings, showing silhouettes of people crossing. There were very few boats, a couple of tiny coracles, nothing bigger. A market was being held in the square, people bustling through, talking and laughing at tables spread with goods. Daniel eyed them, noticing their clothes were brighter and with more colours rather than the uniform drabness of poverty in years to come.

  “So, how do we find your mother?”

  “Dunno.” Talia was looking truculent and Daniel recognised the look from when she didn’t want to admit she didn’t know something. “What do you remember?” A cart rumbled by, pulled by two people. A far easier task on these roads than in later times. “Okay, lets sit here and get you to think.” Daniel pulled Talia next to the wall, out of the way of the through route. Talia huffed and glared out across the water. He rubbed his head, “What was she called?”

  “Mamin.” She clicked her
mouth shut, refusing to say anymore.

  Daniel gritted his teeth and pulled himself up, determined to try despite being irritated at her shortness. A couple of ladies walked past. He tried a friendly smile and asked, “Excuse me, I’m looking for Mamin, do you know where she is?”

  One laughed, “Sorry dear, I’ve no idea where your Mamin is.” Daniel flushed as they walked off giving him amused sideways looks and cursed, his head tightening.

  “Okay Talia, so Mamin was what you called your mother right?” She grunted, pushing her toes into a crack in the road. “What did other people call her?”

  “How would I know?”

  The urge to hit something rose and Daniel forced himself to breathe. “Maybe try closing your eyes and thinking of her.”

  “Why?”

  “Bloody hell Talia, at least I’m trying. You might get an idea of where she is, like I did the Dust Lord.”

  “I can’t remember anything.” Heads turned at her wail and she lowered her voice. “I only remember Dodie looking after me, not Mamin.” She sniffed, still staring at the road.

  Daniel remembered the skinny bundle of child in his arms, far quieter than any child of that age should be and wondered what had happened. He wrapped an arm around her which she promptly shrugged off. “Please try for me.”

  She snorted but shut her eyes. “I remember her singing in the dark.”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  “Safe.” A rare smile crossed her face.

  “Where were you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Try reaching for her, see if you can feel where she is.”

  Her eyes popped open. “Not here.”

  “No, I mean just get a general direction. It’s better than nothing.”

  Talia stuck her lip out, “Can’t feel anything.”

  Daniel sighed and suggested walking along the sea front. The high tide mark showed dark against cobbles, slime and seaweed decorated the slope. The sea lapped further down. Buildings were being demolished in what Daniel recognised as the bay in Talia’s time. One of the rope bridges swung close by and Daniel’s stomach lurched at the figures swaying across it.