by W.S. Lacey
“You will need to rest in preparation for your part in the ceremony. Gaspar will escort you to the altar when it is time. Good day, majesty.” Simon the Chronicler opened the door and two doughy eunuchs softly ushered Spender out. He was confused as ever and felt that the audience had not gone at all well.
Later, the chronicler made another appearance at Spender’s window.
“I don’t think the high priest has ever wanted to poison someone so badly. I hope for your sake that something happens tomorrow, the holy man has been telling people that your insides are made of gold. If you aren’t marching to the sea by breakfast, they might try opening you up.” He had a moment of introspection. “Very literal minded, most Tyrians are.”
That night, Spender had unsettling dreams about doors and goats and dark places. He dreamt that the high priest was leading him to an altar that turned into a door. As he was about to open the door, he began to sink into the earth. There was a loud bang and he started awake. Gaspar flew into the room.
“I’ve brought your garments, Balth the stern and warlike,” he said, brandishing a pile of robes flung over his arm.
“Is it time already?” Spender asked.
“Goodness no, we’re going to process through the city.”
#
Spender found himself in a eunuch-drawn carriage travelling through the streets of Tyre. Great masses of shouting Tyrians milled around and began following the carriage in a giant confused flock. By and by, they moved out of the city and along a path that circled a hill several times before coming to the peak. Spender could see, from a distance, a magnificent towering henge at the top of the hill. All around its outer edge were the lights of countless torches and the white robes of priestlings as they flitted about.
There are times when one has woken late in the day, had a bit to eat, and gone for a walk only to find that the day has quite gotten away and is nearly over. Spender felt this now as they crept up the hill. He tapped his foot uncontrollably and, feeling his heart hammering away, wondered if this was how the goats felt. The carriage lurched to a stop and the crowd parted before them.
High Priest Gladbiscuit stood at the base of a raised altar in the middle of the stone circle. He had his sleeves pushed up and the white robes of his retinue were spattered with blood. Spender heard a goat mutter.
“People of Tyre,” Gladbiscuit shouted, “behold your King!” The crowd cheered and pressed forward. In the short lull, a voice from the back said, “I hear he’s got golden entrails”. Gladbiscuit ignored the voice and seemed, in the heat of the moment, to have forgotten that he expected Spender to be revealed as a fraud. He looked around with fervor. “The sun sets on the Black Plinth. Bring the goat, bring the book.”
“Bring the goat, bring the book,” his assembled priestlings chanted quietly. Gaspar grabbed Spender’s elbow and pulled him forward. As a fidgeting white kid was carried to the altar, Gladbiscuit shoved an open leather tome into his hands. Spender skimmed the page and flipped the book over. He was so puzzled and intrigued that he missed the outburst of scrabbling and bleating.
“The Grimoire of Balth;” Spender said, “where did you get this?” He looked up. “What have you done? The goat!” Gladbiscuit was holding a bloodstained dagger and looked not a little crazed.
“Open the book, read the incantation!” Spender fumbled the book open.
“I can’t pronounce this; I don’t even know what it means.”
“Read it!” Gladbiscuit was nearly frothing at the mouth. Spender looked at the dripping dagger and decided not to raise any more objections. As he went to the altar, the priests began a sort of humming dirge. His hands were shaking and he gripped the book as tightly as he could.
“Adonay, Adiram, Dalmay.” Spender’s voice echoed off the stones of the henge and was magnified, deepened. The crowd had fallen deathly silent. “Berald, Beroald, Balbin.” A gust of wind kicked up and the torches guttered. From where Spender was standing, the sun seemed to be sitting directly on the black plinth. “Gab, Gabor, Agaba.” Dark clouds scudded across the sky and covered the sun, plunging the henge into a dim cold twilight. The priests had stopped their dirge. Spender licked his lips. “Alim, Agla, Schadai.” The wind stopped and every torch simultaneously went out. There was a pressing, terrible silence. He read the final line. “Dis manibus sacrum, ego te provoco ex umbra in solem. Flectere si nequeo superos, Achaeronta movebo.” In the utter stillness that followed, Spender hardly dared to breathe. Soon the silence’s spell would be broken and he would join the body of the white goat on the altar. The white goat- the white goat was smoking.
With a deafening roar, the altar exploded in a pillar of flame that rose into the heavens. As people fled and screamed, a whirlwind ripped through the henge, scouring the dirt and grass and howling through the stones. As the priests tumbled down the hill, a terrible figure appeared in the middle of the pillar of flame. It spread its arms and gave voice to an unearthly sound. As suddenly as it appeared, the flame was gone, trailing into the sky and leaving the smoking unholy figure standing on the wreckage of the altar. Spender looked up, his face scorched and eyes watering. He coughed and smiled weakly.
“I still have your watch.”
Chapter Five
North had dropped through the earth for what seemed like ages, falling through a soft smooth blackness that felt, as he explained to Spender, like “swimming through warm dry water, if that makes any sense”. After a while, he began to make out a hazy orange glow far below. The mindless terror of falling had dissipated and, as the glow approached, North only desperately hoped that he wasn’t about to die. Presently, he passed through a sort of shadow and, at that moment, a wide vista opened beneath his feet.
Gigantic step pyramids and ziggurats rose above an expanse of fiery red rock that heaved and fell in steep crags and ravines. Groves of stalagmites stabbed up into the air and massive piles of boulders and crushed rock littered the ground. North fell slowly, as if in a dream, to the pinnacle of one of the tallest pyramids and stumbled. As he gained his feet, he looked down upon a hellish landscape. Tall gaunt things with hollow black eyes and jaws tied up with cloth stood atop cliffs and tiers. Their skin was like pale clay and each one carried a whip or a flail. Filing through ravines and rocks, a long line of pitiful, hunched figures struggled under stones and chains. From his vantage point, North could see great hordes of humanity streaming towards a single point, a monumental unfinished pyramid, all overseen by the creatures above.
He had been looking far afield and did not notice that one such creature was just below him. It turned and, with a cavernous moan, drew back its arm. North turned and leapt down to the other side of the pyramid just as the tip of the creature’s whip caught his shoulder. The pain was, North said “absolutely unbearable, the worst thing I’ve ever felt; it was as if someone had lit a knife on fire and stuck it right in my back”. (North showed Spender the scar from the whip, which was, truth be told, an impressive one.) North tumbled down several steps, caught himself, and dashed off, displaying a nimbleness and dexterity born of fear. He rounded a cairn and just managed to dodge another creature, coming so close that he saw, in the depths of its empty eye sockets, two gold coins. He brushed past its grasping arms with their pale dead skin and put on a burst of speed. He wasn’t quite fast enough and the creature sent its flail across the middle of his back. (North’s clothes hung in tatters as he sat with Spender in front of the blackened remains of the altar. His back in particular looked much the worse for wear.) North yelped and vaulted over a pile of rubble before darting through a stand of stalagmites.
As he hid and crept through the shadows, North unknowingly went deeper into the center of the subterranean polis. The soaring monuments were clustered closer together and the stone had darkened to a rusted red. North had fewer encounters with the gray awful creatures as he traveled down the dim byways and avenues that led, as strands in a web, to a single nexus. As he told Spender, “There was no sense of the passage of time th
ere. A blackness stretched across above the entire city, like a vaulted ceiling so high that no light could touch it.”
Battered and footsore, North came to the center of the nightmare, a faded primeval pyramid, the scale of which defied reason. Its worn steps mounted up to dizzying heights and its summit was lost in the void above. Directly in front of North, set in the face of the pyramid, was a yawning entrance. He stopped, weighing the dangers of going down a pitch black passage in a place that crawled with ghastly beings capable of flaying one’s flesh from one’s bones. As if summoned by his thoughts, three of the creatures converged on him, howling and straining at the cloth that tied their jaws shut. They looked, North thought, terribly hungry. With the way back blocked off and the creatures closing more rapidly than he would have liked, North ran into the passage without further hesitation. He had to go along carefully at first and he was relieved that there were no signs of pursuit by the ghouls.
There are times when, being in a darkened room, one’s eyes adjust and, gradually, shapes emerge from the gloom. This was not such a time. As he walked, North put his hand directly in front of his face and stared hard but the darkness was as impenetrable as if he were blind. It was perhaps due to his blindness that he continually stepped awkwardly. Strangely, he couldn’t tell if he was going uphill or down. His footing was unsure and he was becoming disoriented such that, when he brushed up against the passage wall, he kept it at his fingertips as he walked.
Eventually, his curiosity about his direction of travel became too much for him and he lay flat on his back. He closed his eyes (though there was really no point) and, after some concentration, decided that it felt like he was going downhill, or possibly up. He wondered if it was possible to move up in a downward direction.
North awoke in a panic, the darkness around him so thick that it felt tangible, smothering. He realized that he had fallen asleep and slowly got up, careful not to turn around. He felt woozy and strange in the head, as one often does after sleeping flat on one’s back without a pillow. After walking in the darkness for a great while, his eyes began to bloom splotches of blue and purple. He continued with these colors swimming in front of him for some time and, when he saw a faint golden light, thought that it was an artefact of his mind.
As he walked, the light grew stronger and brighter until, at last, North was able to walk steadily and see the passage walls. He was surrounded by smooth sandstone with rows upon rows of barely legible characters carved into the surface. At once, he came out onto a landing. Far, far above him, a shaft of light shone in through a gap in the rock and lit the chamber. It reminded North of nothing so much as a well, albeit a well big enough to drop a house down with a narrow stone staircase winding down its wall. He looked over the edge and couldn’t quite see the bottom, so he went to the entrance of the passage and managed to knock a chunk out of the corner. Armed with his piece of sandstone, he dropped it over the edge and began to hum “Forty-seven ginger-headed sailors”. By the time he got to “Red-head Tom”, he heard the stone clatter on the ground below.
There was nowhere else to go and he liked the way the chamber echoed so, as he descended the stair, he kept humming. He went around and around and- the tune died in his throat. He raced down the last stairs and stood at the bottom of the well.
What had North standing, transfixed, in a pool of light in the center of the floor, was the wall. It was covered in fantastic figures and symbols that were cut deep into the stone and were very well defined in spite of their apparent age. Humans with animal features knelt and walked beneath a row of circles and the coils of a serpent surrounded them all. Below them, a leviathan swam through stone waves. In mountains on either side of the fish were the faces of two bearded men, one with a tree sprouting from his mouth and the other issuing a waterfall in the same manner.
In the very center, above the leviathan, was an eye with rays emanating from it in all directions. It was the deepest, clearest carving and, although it was not the largest image, it drew North’s attention. He went close and saw that the pupil of the eye was a hole in the wall. It was just at his level and so very interesting that, almost without thinking about it, he walked right up to the wall and looked in.
For an instant, he saw the scaly head of a snake, its eyes flashing. It jerked forward in a blur and he cried out as it bit him in the eye. He staggered back with his hand to his face and blood dripping down onto his shirt. North stood in the middle of the floor, his heart racing. He began to feel lightheaded and black waves swept across the corner of his good eye. He stumbled, breathing heavily through his nose. His eye throbbed and he began to feel as if he were floating in the ocean. Roger North dropped to the floor and lay on his back, insensate.
#
At first he saw only lights, bright floating lights that shone like tiny suns and waxed and waned in the darkness. Gradually, thin auroras drifted over them like misty veils. The auroras began to twist and curl like drops of dye in a glass of water and he could see faint shadows drifting through them. The shadows grew deeper and stronger and the auroras gradually dissipated. He could see strange and wondrous things, people and places all moving and shifting into each other. He saw a lovely girl with her hair under a scarf. She smiled at him and melted away like smoke. He saw an old man sitting on the floor in front of a cruel young man. They blurred and sank and he saw a- surely it was a woman. It was beautiful but so very cold, with ancient malice in its eyes; it was like a million year old snake. He was frightened and the woman blew away.
The shades came faster and faster, few familiar, all whirling and running and mixing into each other. He saw himself and Spender and a beggar. He saw snow and sand and deep dark water. He saw a quiet, tree lined road at night with rows of tidy sleeping houses on both sides. Soon, it was going too fast for him to see and the shapes became little more than unfocused shadows gliding through auroras that undulated like long trailing pieces of silk. Eventually, there were only lights, bobbing and pulsing, bright as tiny suns.
#
North drifted in the lights for what seemed like years. He forgot about the door, the creatures, and the snake and simply was. Gradually, the lights dissolved and he regained consciousness, lying on his back at the bottom of the well. He gingerly prodded at the swollen side of his face. It was very tender and felt bruised. With great care, he cracked open his eye, gasped, and shut it again quickly, heedless of the burning pain that it caused. He clumsily rolled over and got to his knees. His head was pounding and he stopped for a moment. Looking down at his bloody shredded shirt, he put his hand on his knee and stood up. He swayed on his feet like a drunkard and again felt his eye with his fingertips. He opened it again and flinched but did not close it. Instead, he gazed around in wonder.
#
“What did you see?” Spender asked him as they sat in the moonlit henge.
“It’s difficult to explain. I saw- or rather I see- Was, Are, Will, and Maybe. I see things that happened in the past all the time; sometimes I see things that might have happened but didn’t. I see loads of things that will happen and some things that would happen in the future but don’t for some reason or another. I see things that might be happening now if only the past or the future were different. I can see hidden things especially clearly, I think because the people who hide them pay so much attention to them. The question really is; what can’t I see?” The stars had come out, myriad points of light strewn across the velvet sky. As Spender looked at them, he was momentarily disturbed that he could not find a single familiar constellation. North continued.
“There are things I don’t see; more like, there are things that I see but don’t grasp or remember. Things can get lost in the flood and, if I don’t concentrate, it can get very overwhelming.”
“Is that why you wear that cloth?” Spender asked. Since his spectacular appearance on the altar, North had had a rag tied around his head like an eye patch.
“It doesn’t block things out very much but it helps, almost like hold
ing something up very close to your face. If you focus on it, everything past it in your field of vision gets blurry. When I first put it on, I thought that I had made a mistake. I saw everything about the cloth including all the things it might have been and where it will end up. Eventually, I got used to it and learned to block it out. It is just a bit of fabric after all, not like a person.”
“Can I see it? Your eye, I mean.”
“Alright.” North untied the rag and looked at Spender. His entire eye was a luminous silver with a subtle luster like a clouded moon. He suddenly looked away and began tying the rag back on. “It’s become very ill mannered for me to look at anybody for too long.” Spender, a bit awestruck, just nodded.
#
It took time for North to get accustomed to his eye; so great was the deluge of visions that it was almost more than his mind could bear. Even in this deep and lonely place, the centuries, all possible incarnations of them, stretched on in both directions. It was his view of things gone and things yet to come that allowed him to make a discovery. The floor of the well was tiled in concentric circles and, as he looked at it, he saw that others who had come before had stood on two particular tiles and, beyond that, that he would stand on those tiles in the future. They were not particularly close together and it took an unusual stance to get to them both. (It was not the kind of thing that someone might find accidentally.)
The tiles sank beneath his feet and, with a shudder, the whole floor began to sink. North watched the foot of the stairs climb out of reach and wished that his forethought matched his newfound foresight. The floor rumbled to a stop, revealing a small doorway directly below the decorated wall. Apparently, North would go through it in the future; indeed, a whole crowd would at some point. (His eye was still new to him and, at times, it was hard to tell if something was happening in the distant future or the very near future. For example, he wasn’t sure if he saw himself going into the room in the next minute, some time much later, or both.) He reasoned that, if he was going through the doorway at some later date, going through the first time hadn’t killed him. With that decided, he went in.