Читать книгу The Cracks in the Aether - Robert Reginald - Страница 10

CHAPTER FIVE

“’TWAS A VILE, VICIOUS THING”

Scooter and I transited home to Barstölný in Southern Kórynthia early that afternoon, and I wasn’t sorry to go. People were now looking at me in very strange ways, to the point where even the wherret was commenting on their bizarre behavior.

“What’s the matter with them, Master?” my familiar asked, after one such encounter with a comely lass, who made an effort to slink away from us as we passed by her in a Palace corridor.

“Maybe they think we’re infested with cooties,” I said.

“Cooties? What’s that?”

“Blood-suckers.”

“Wherrets don’t tolerate such intruders.”

“You’re covered with fur, and you don’t get cooties?” I reached around and plucked something off Scooter’s right forelimb. “Then what’s that?” I asked.

“What’s what? What did you find?” The creature frantically started examining itself, contorting its legs into seemingly impossible formations, until I could no longer restrain my mirth.

“Verrry funny!” Scooter said. “Ha…ha…ha. You humans have no perspective whatsoever. To willingly torment an intelligent being physically smaller than yourself…well, it displays, at the least, a lamentable absence of dignity.”

I was laughing too hard to respond.

“Harrumph,” it finally said. And then it started pouting. Wherrets can pout with a great deal of energy. It just makes them funnier.

* * * *

Upon our arrival, I began activating the more advanced features of my home’s defensive system. This included blocking potential visitors from even reaching the house proper without my permission. My small estate was surrounded by what appeared to be a stone wall, but was actually more sophisticated than that. The main bronze gate, when secured, could not be forced by physical might, although any shield can be penetrated psychically, given enough time, energy, and knowledge. And if challenged, the wall would extend itself upwards almost indefinitely. Although based in the material world, it had dimensions extruding into other realities, and untangling those would be a task worthy of a Class vii Mage.

Similarly, the house was built into the side of a hill, placing the laboratory, transit alcove, and sleeping quarters securely underground; this enabled me to add another layer of protection to the facility. Even if an intruder somehow managed to penetrate the front door—an unlikely scenario—getting through the shield covering the solid rock bunker was nigh unto impossible. All of this would take even an accomplished magician a considerable amount of time—and while he was doing his damndest, I would be transiting to a safe house somewhere else. The knowledge of where such “back doors” were physically located were always kept very close to the breast. Mine was a rundown, rural hut in the remote mountains of eastern Asia Minor.

Mages tend to be somewhat paranoid about potential enemies, given their first-hand knowledge of what their powers can accomplish, and most of their abodes are built like miniature psychic fortresses.

While Scooter went to take care of its business, I greeted Mistress “Weasely,” my housekeeper, whom I’d fashioned out of a weasel, broom, and several other implements. It kept the place clean, and all it cost me was a few live rats. It squeaked at me in return.

I gazed at my expansive front room, surrounded on three sides by tall, broad windows of transparent silica overlooking a tranquil, well-tended garden. I truly liked my house. I liked it a great deal. And I didn’t want to give this up, if there was any way to preserve it.

I fixed myself a light meal, which I shared with Scooter, and then I read a little Barlévin before turning down the light.

* * * *

My dreams that night were filled with the monsters accumulated from a life of too many years—my sins of commission and omission, my loves (mostly lost), my undoubted success in my chosen profession—and my utter failure to find true happiness.

And so I sailed that boat yclept Ye Night Mare, being flung here and there upon waves of fiction and fantasy until I came to a shore that I had never before visited.

A great palace, mayhap, or just the dwelling place of a very wealthy man, some mighty structure inhabited by a potentate of potentates, filled with servants and slaves coming and going, like ants upon their hill, each to their purpose, unknowable to anyone save their ruler. I found myself drifting down long, dim passages, my spirit questing for…I knew not what.

And then I heard it again!

“Help me!”

The voice seemed to emanate from deep within the structure. I could feel its faint vibration, and I attuned myself to the sympathetic waves that it created within the æthersphere.

“Help me!”

It was a woman’s voice, I now realized, now that I was closer to the source—a woman of power and puissance, an entity to be reckoned with.

“Oh, please: help me!”

There was almost a vibrato to the undertone, as if the speaker had long since given up any hope of a response.

“Where are you?” I cried, my words echoing down the passageway, with “…Are you?” bouncing back at me.

Suddenly God deafened all the sounds in the world but His, and I could hear the very heart beating in my chest, threatening to burst its bounds.

“Where are you?” I repeated, now almost whispering the words.

“Here!” came the faint reply.

I sent my soul in the direction of that voice, until I came to a blank brick wall that allowed me no access. It was interlaced with psychic protections of a sophistication and configuration I’d never seen before.

“Where are you?” I called out again.

“Here!” was her reply. “I’m a prisoner. In here!”

She was trapped somewhere on the other side of that barrier, but I couldn’t penetrate that stone, no matter how hard I tried.

Then I placed both hands on the rough red structure and extended my consciousness to its fullest degree, pushing myself forward as hard as possible, until I could just barely feel a presence on the other side, just enough to know that someone was actually there, someone deeply immersed in her own knot of pain.

I was abruptly aware of a third entity, rapidly racing down the corridor behind me—and it was not a friend! I glanced back at the thing, and gasped at what I saw—and then….

* * * *

…And then I woke up, choking for breath.

“Master,” my companion said, jumping up on my chest. “What is it?”

I told the wherret everything that had happened to me in that foreign place.

“This was real,” I said. “All of it. This was not a place of my imagining. It exists, Scooter.”

“Tell me about the ‘other’,” the creature said.

“I saw very little of it, but what I could feel was like nothing I’ve ever encountered. It had the rough shape of a very large bird, but ’twas a vile, vicious thing full of malice aforethought, with claws on its wings, two spikes on its legs, and jagged, knife-like teeth. It would have killed me, had I given it half the chance.”

“Yes, it would have,” Scooter agreed. “I’ve heard of such beings, although I’ve never actually seen one. Master, this…creature derives from one of the distant Otherworlds, far out into the æther. You cannot go there and ever hope to return.”

But I was not convinced. It is ever such with man, that he desires that which he cannot attain, and disdains that which is near at hand.

Although I’d had all the makings of a good life in Kórynthia, recent events had suddenly tainted my future—and that of the realm—with uncertainty. So, perhaps I would have better luck trying something else. Perhaps I could leave the Kingdom during its time of chaos, and return after things were settled again.

This captive woman might provide an escape from my troubles. The more I considered the notion, the more I felt energized for the first time in a great many years. There was something about her plight that touched a place deep within my soul. Why, I could go on a quest, just like the knights of eld! I could rescue the lady and make my fortune, and then return home, enshrouded in glory, a legend among mages.

My life here had become stale and static, unworthy of a scion of the great House of Parakôdês. My ancestor of that name had been known as a man of action, a man of principle, a man who wouldn’t have hesitated to venture forth into the unknown void, oh yes! Rescue a damsel in distress—no problem!

I can do this, I told myself. I can find her. I can save her. I can find myself again in the process.

No greater fool does a man ever see than his own image in the mirror, reflected back at him.

In the end, all the worms really do ooze out of the clay. In the end, they consume one’s being.