“It is too far,” she groaned. “I cannot begin to reach that gap.”
“It is all metaphysical,” I told her. “The laws of nature are different here. Reach out and see the crack in space and believe that it is directly before you, no distance at all.”
“I—very well,” she said, hesitant, confused. I had trained her for quite a few contingencies during her apprenticeship with me, but this was an entirely new scenario. Still, she must have known she could trust me and believe me, for it worked.
“There,” she gasped, and I could see the split I had opened was now much closer to us; barely a meter in front of the ship. And Mirana had wedged the Shield of Sevenaya halfway into it.
“Excellent,” I told her.
I released my hold on the universe itself. The gap tried to snap closed but it remained open, barred from sealing by the cosmic item currently jammed inside it. Reaching out again, I grasped the Shield and twisted it as hard as I could.
Something in the fabric of reality gave way then. The gap widened, widened, and for an instant gaped open large enough to admit even the entirety of our little ship.
Mirana worked her magic. The ship lurched forward. We passed through the gap in reality and left the black void of space behind. We remained on the river, but now that river ran through an entirely different universe.
I pulled the Shield back on board and handed it to Mirana. Then I leaned against the railing, exhausted.
Some of the others were gasping, doubtlessly witnessing the wonders of a pocket universe hand-crafted by its master for the first time.
I, on the other hand, slumped to the deck. Vaguely I remember Mirana hurriedly placing a folded cloak behind my head as a pillow. Then I passed out.
Even the gods must nap occasionally.
NINETEEN
In sleep I dreamed. And there I experienced something almost unheard of among my kind. Something that reveals itself to the gods only on exceedingly rare occasions.
I experienced a bit of perspective.
We gods are unique, each and every one of us—but all of us are very different from any mortal human. The differences between us and the mortals are many and varied. Some are readily apparent: Our individual abilities, derived from the raw Power that flows from the cosmic Fountain at the heart of the Golden City, set us apart. This would include my mastery of the cold and ice, as well as Baranak’s martial skills, Lucian’s blue lightning and Goraddon’s persuasion, to name but a few. We can all of us open portals from one dimension of the multiverse to the next, as well—at least, usually we can. As I lay there asleep on the deck of the little ship, and for days before and after that, I was not able to, for reasons then unknown.
Beyond those obvious traits, however, we all shared one thing more that set us apart from humanity: effective immortality.
As long as the Fountain flows, we gods remain alive. Regardless of any injuries we might suffer, we exist; we persist. And we have lived for a very long time. Many millennia at least, by the time of the Second Pax Machina, as the current era is called by the mortals.
And yet, despite our seeming immortality, the vast majority of us did die. It happened ages ago, when Vorthan the deathgod first revealed his true nature and found a way to shut down the Fountain. During that brief period without the Power radiating throughout the multiverse and enervating our cells, all of us were made vulnerable; essentially we became mortals ourselves. That was when he slew so many of us; dozens of us. By the time his treachery was discovered and defeated and the Fountain’s flow restored, only a scant few of us remained alive.
Most of us who survived Vorthan’s madness wanted little to do with the Golden City or our fellow gods afterward. We scattered to the four corners of the galaxy or to pocket universes removed entirely from the mortal realm. I had long since taken up permanent residence upon my remote ice world, well before the atrocities of the deathgod, and there I remained afterward. I embraced my self-declared exile. Lucian returned from a more official form of exile to help defeat Vorthan, and afterward he reigned in the Golden City for a brief time, fulfilling his longtime ambition. But with so many gods dead, that place had become empty, a shell and a shadow of its former glory. Soon enough he tired of the charade and returned to his old habits of meddling in the politics of the human worlds. I understand he even married a mortal woman—perhaps even sired demigods. You would know more of this than I, of course, given your own lineage.
And this returns me to my point: Each of us during such a long lifespan developed particular traits, particular views that I doubt anyone of a mortal lifespan could duplicate or even comprehend. We had the opportunity to see the universe—to see multiple universes—over centuries, millennia. Even removed from mortal society as several of us were, we looked on and watched it evolve over generation after generation of citizens and rulers. We were able to gain greater insights into the nature of humans and aliens than any mortal ever could.
And yet, for all of that, our own perspectives shrank. Rather than enlightening us and causing us to grow more open, more accepting of the many variations in society and behavior, those long and lonely years hardened us, caused us to become ever more deeply set in our ways. We possessed immortality but gradually lost the one thing so necessary to using such a gift properly: perspective. We saw only our own petty wants and needs and lost all interest in the bigger picture. We became even more self-centered, more selfish than before. Holed up on our private planets or in our secret cosmos, we endured our endless lifetimes. There we scoffed at the mortals and we kept out of their way and regarded all their actions with arrogance; with a studied and affected disinterest.
If the crisis with Cevelar and his associates did anything for me, it was to shake me out of my ages-long complacency and force me to confront harsh truths about myself and my role in the multiverse.
It gave me perspective.
Lying there asleep on the deck of the little sailing ship, dreaming dreams of my fellow gods mostly long-dead, I came to see that for the first time.
Perspective.
Let me pause here in the narrative and state for the record: I have never been one for introspection, as you probably know. Nor can I spin a tale to suit my own purposes and advance my own agendas quite the way Lucian could.
You understand now who you are and where you come from. Why you have always been different from the others around you. My apprentice, Mirana, knows me better than anyone has in many millennia—if anyone in the cosmos can be said to know me. But I desire that you should come to know me even better. With perspective I see that it is important to me for you to grasp this; to grasp all the facts of what has happened in recent days. I want you to understand all of this so you will understand the actions I took at the end. Why I could not save him.
Despite everything you have seen and heard, despite everything I have ever said, I want you to know that, in my heart, I did desire that outcome. But I couldn’t make it happen. I simply could not.
You may not believe me. You may never believe me. But it is the truth.
Awake.
Awake and sitting up, then rising to my feet. Looking around. Taking in the sights—some expected, some not.
Our little boat yet sailed along the river, through water that was both real and metaphorical, but now that river defied gravity and logic. For it floated in midair, a blue-green ribbon winding along like a strand of clouds, but solid and fully capable of supporting vessels such as ours.
The others leaned against the railing on both sides of the bow, gaping at the majestic scenery. Mirana stood front and center, hands up, guiding us along.
I stepped closer to them and looked out, amazed myself. While my castle of ice is pristine and beautiful, I must admit that what Lucian had wrought here surpassed it. If you like that sort of thing, at least.
Obviously he had done some work to it since my only previous visit, millennia earlier. But the basics remained. It was a two-sided island, floating suspended in a bright
ly-lit cosmos. Imagine lifting a few square kilometers of jungle right off the surface of its world, then another identical slice—and then flipping one over and pasting the two together, back-to-back. Then suspending the whole arrangement in mid-air, or rather mid-space, amid shimmering blue skies everywhere around. And running a river up to it; a river that actually flows all the way across each surface, all the way around it—more defying of physics, obviously—and becomes a waterfall at both edges, falling in opposite directions.
And of course gravity worked in the correct direction on either side, top or bottom, to pull you “down” toward the ground at your feet.
How he engineered the entire thing, not being in any way a “creator” god, I have never known. But it was impressive.
While I had slept, our little ship had sailed most of the distance from the entryway we had pried open at the outer edge of the pocket universe. Now we closed in on the island itself. The transition from sailing on the river suspended in the void to sailing on the river as it flowed across the island was utterly gentle and would have passed entirely unnoticed by any of us had we not all been staring in amazement.
Across the face of the sky-island we zipped, the water carrying us along at surprising speed. Binari recognized he no longer needed to provide additional propulsion and retrieved his little drone. Even so, our rate of travel only increased. Within a few minutes we had passed beneath vast canopies of bright green trees and vines and through a winding low valley with sandy hills on either side. At one point we passed a spot I suspected might be the location of Lucian’s residence, but our ship didn’t slow down.
“Mirana,” I called to my apprentice at that point. “You may ease off on the acceleration. We are quickly running out of island.”
She didn’t turn back to me as she replied, strain evident in her voice, “I have been actively attempting to arrest our momentum for some time now, my lady.”
The edge grew nearer still. We could all hear the roar of the waterfall. I frowned.
“What do you suppose is the problem?” I asked her.
“Let me raise a more immediate question,” Davos said. “Should we abandon ship?”
A short pause, and then Mirana replied, “No—I don’t think that will be necessary.”
I trusted her. I wanted to believe her. We all did.
And yet, when we arrived at the falls and saw all that water spilling over the side, I must admit I was in a state of near-panic—if not for me, then for the others, who were not as physically resilient. What would happen if we went over? Would we plummet into the depths of that too-blue sky, and float away, lost forever in the void? I wasn’t sure and didn’t wish to find out.
Mirana finally managed to slow our momentum, but was not able to entirely stop it. We crept up to the edge of the waterfall and for just an instant the ship perched there, hanging off the side of the island, all of us staring off into nothing. The roar was deafening; foam and spray filled the air.
And then the ship pitched forward and gravity… changed, somehow... and we were going around and down, down the short side. But somehow we all remained on our feet, as impossible as that sounds; there was almost no sensation of falling. And then a moment later we shifted again and went over that edge and down and around again… And then there we were, gravity working the right way again as now we sailed across the bottom side of the island. Or perhaps this was the top, all along; it depends on one’s perspective, as so many things do.
Our velocity slowed and the currents carried us to starboard, into a small estuary, and the ship came to a gentle stop against the shore. We were all out of breath and wet from the spray of the waterfall, and we looked at one another in something like surprise that we had all survived.
“Remarkable,” observed Davos. “In this place, gravity itself is manipulated so that the ground is always ‘down.’ On either side.”
Mirana was leaning against the railing, facing the shore. “The currents brought us here,” she said, watching the swirls and eddies in the water around us. “Straight here. It must be an automated system, designed to bring boats in that way.”
“I enjoyed it,” Davos said.
“I did not,” Binari chirped.
“I will have words with Lucian, if I ever see him again,” I stated, wringing water from my hair. “Strong words.”
* * *
We left the ship there in the cove and followed General Tamerlane up a rough path set between tall palm trees. He seemed to know the way, marching along confidently. I was content to follow along with the others. Many centuries had passed since I had last visited the place, and I had virtually no recollections of its layout or the location of his hidden… What is the word I should use here? Headquarters? Hideout? Storehouse? Secret base? It was all of those things to Lucian, and more. Given his nature, however, I believe I shall go with “lair.”
Up a low, sloping hill we climbed, tall grass blowing in the wind on either side of us. Faintly we could hear the cries of some sort of animals on the wind. There was no actual sun, but the sky above and to the sides— and I have to assume the skies below us, too— radiated a constant and perpetual mid-day blue with the faintest streaks of puffy white clouds here and there.
Solonis had said he would meet us here, but there was no sign of him yet. Of course, he had provided no reference as to when that would be. And what did time matter to someone who traveled up and down the timestream the way he did? Presumably he would arrive when he needed to arrive.
For that matter, what precisely was he up to? Why did I still not trust him? This bothered me more than I felt it should, and I pondered it. Could it be because, for every occasion he had rescued us or provided our means of escape, there was another incident where he had gotten us into terrible danger? Could it also be because I was not convinced he was entirely sane?
Or perhaps it was me. Perhaps I simply didn’t trust anyone anymore, let alone another of my own kind. There had only ever been one of them in whom I had placed my complete and utter trust, and he had been dead lo these many centuries.
This thought saddened me, but it also served to remind me of what was at stake here. We could not allow Vorthan to be reborn. And certainly not as a result of a process that involved the six Cosmic Weapons. For I had no doubt that Cevelar not only meant to see the deathgod returned, but to see him made far more powerful than ever. He meant to use the Cosmic Weapons and their immense energies to create a new Vorthan. A Vorthan whose raw, naked might matched the intensity of his loathing of all life. And that could not be allowed to happen.
So on up the hill we trudged, me chafing in the heat and wondering all the while why Lucian had made the place so difficult to traverse. Eventually we passed between several palm trees leaning at a forty-five degree angle, and Tamerlane appeared to take this as a sign or landmark, so there we stopped. We looked all around from that higher vantage point, but still no Solonis. Not even an empty glass box that might mark the location where he would arrive. I had of course taken note that on some occasions the box already existed, empty, where he would eventually appear inside it, and at other times the box and its passengers arrived together. The significance of this I did not know and frankly did not care terribly much about, at the moment. I found it hard to imagine a time when I ever would.
“This way,” Tamerlane said, gesturing off to his right.
We followed the general through the underbrush and onto a path of square gray stones. Along these we walked for a short distance, following their winding trail with dense foliage on either side, before breaking out into a clearing with a yawning cave mouth just across from us.
“He has changed things around a bit,” I noted as we crossed the clearing and walked into the cave. Its inner reaches were dark as pitch. “I don’t remember the—”
My voice trailed off as we heard a sound echoing behind us. We all turned.
Back on the far side of the clearing, a glowing line had been drawn in the fabric of reality. It ran verti
cally from about eight feet up until it met the ground. A glittering piece of sharp silvery metal, about ten inches long, protruded through from the other side, seeming to float there, cutting as it moved downward. As we looked on, the slashed line parted, its edges shimmering with ethereal fire, and for a few moments another place in another universe was visible through the opening.
And then three figures stepped through.
The two on either side carried themselves like too many of my kind do, with a haughty arrogance and a sneering contempt for all around them. They were not, however, immediately recognizable to me. Understand: it had been centuries since I had last seen even those of my fellow gods and goddesses that I considered friends—and that had been precious few of their number, even before Vorthan’s murder spree. The rest I barely recalled at all. So these two, if they were indeed gods, were gods I did not know.
But the one standing front and center? Tall and lean, black of skin, brown of eye? He of the bald head and the facial expression that repeatedly shifted from disapproval to outrage? Yes, I knew him. I remembered him all too well.
“Kambangan,” I said to him, as we all moved out into the open but remained arrayed across the entryway to Lucian’s cave. “So you yet endure.”
He met my eyes and I realized at that moment that something was very wrong with him, though it took a bit longer to discover exactly what.
“Karilyne,” he said, stepping forward, his long brown cloak fluttering where it was draped over the left side of his body, shoulder to ankle. Beneath it he wore his traditional garb of silver-studded black leather. “Well met, after so very long,” he said, nodding once. Then his eyes flicked past me to the entrance to Lucian’s lair. “Step aside, please.”
“You wish to enter this cave?” I asked. “Why?”
“Do not concern yourself with such things,” he replied. He cast his clearly disapproving gaze over the others who stood behind me. “Why travel you with such rabble?”
Karilyne- Heart Cold as Ice Page 22