Читать книгу The Cracks in the Aether - Robert Reginald - Страница 6

CHAPTER ONE

“HELP ME!”

“Help me!”

Just two little words, almost a gnawing at the edge of my consciousness—but I was certain that I’d actually heard something.

I’d been scanning the northern perimeter of the sixty-ninth ley on the fortieth tier of the Quietus, looking for a route to the Otherworlds, when I’d brushed past a presence that shouldn’t have been there.

I had to be careful. There were traps in the æthernet that could easily ensnare the unwary.

“Scooter!” I hissed.

The wherret hunched up next to me.

“Master?” it said.

“I need your help,” I said, and the creature scratched my arm with one of its little paws, just enough to draw a line of blood.

It licked the cut, and then I felt its presence suddenly within me, both alien and comforting at one and the same time. It lent me some of its strength.

I probed the ætherwall once again, more gingerly this time, but couldn’t find whatever it was—whatever it might have been.

Finally I broke the link.

“I know it was there,” I said, slumping back in my chair; and then I explained what I’d felt.

“There are many entities roaming the void,” the creature said. “Perhaps this was one of them, seeking a likely victim in an unpracticed acolyte.”

“No!” I said. “It was a person, of that much I’m certain. I’m not a neomage, to be so easily fooled.”

“Anyone can be fooled,” it said. “You humans are simply more subtle in your lies.”

“And you are the most subtle being I’ve ever known,” I noted.

“I rest my case, Sir,” the wherret said.

Then it coughed: “Ahem. While you were skrying, Master, a message arrived from the Queen. She desires the presence of her Scanner Prime.”

“Does she indeed?” I said, not really paying much attention. “I suppose she wants me to read her fortune again. She doesn’t seem to understand that what I tell her just represents possibilities, not realities.”

“She desires verities,” my companion said. “She wants to encompass her world with the certainty of fixed boundaries. Alas, that the universe fails to function in quite that reasonable a manner.”

I waved my hand over the orb and uttered a word of command, shutting off its power.

“Very well.” I sighed. “Let me go splash something on my face, put on a decent shirt and pantaloons, and then we’ll transit to Paltyrrha.”

I left the wherret to do what wherrets do in such intervals (all of which was fairly disgusting), and wandered back into the living area. The basin still had some water in it, and although it wasn’t clean, I used it just the same, and then stared at myself in the mirror.

The face peering back at me was thin and long, framed by a mop of unruly brown curls. The sideburns on the cheeks were beginning to show a few ragged strands of gray—they looked like little worms trying to claw their way to the light. I shuddered. The shadows under my brown eyes hinted at too many late nights, with small lines highlighting them on either side. It was the visage of a man of five-and-thirty years, perhaps.

No, Morpheús, I told myself, you’re not a neomage.

I wet my hands and ran them back through my tangled locks, trying to smooth them down. They wouldn’t cooperate, of course.

Then I put on my second-best suit, and I was ready to go.

Scooter was waiting for me at my viridaurum, the man-sized mirror of green-gold metal. The wherret ran up my leg and perched at its usual spot on my right shoulder, where it could whisper sweet nillions in my ear.

Wherrets were animorphs, and could become many things in many different sizes, as they willed, but this was my companion’s true shape (or so I believed at the time).

I reached out and through the æther and twisted the leys sideways, and we found ourselves standing in a similarly apportioned alcove in the Royal Palace in Paltyrrha. A gryphon was stationed just outside.

“Pathth?” it hissed at us, its forked tail twitching.

I held up my right hand, all five fingers stretched wide, the open palm facing the creature, and the beast touched my lifeline with the tip of its tongue.

“Morpheuth, Thcanner Primuth,” it stated. “And Thcooter. You may enter.”

The scaly one stepped aside, and we trod a familiar path down the winding, weary corridors of Tighrishály Palace.