Now he drew a deep breath and looked solemn.
Puzzled, I waited to see what he was steeling himself to say.
He looked me right in the eyes. “We are sore beset by the Dark Tower, and seek alliance and fellowship and friendship with you and yours, the Ancient and Military Order of the Knights and Poor Fellow Soldiers of Christ of the Temple of Solomon.” He put out his hand to me.
I gave him a long, level look. “You’ve been waiting, like, what, forever to say that to me, haven’t you?”
“Since I was thirteen. I practiced in a mirror.”
I looked at his outstretched hand, but did not take it. “But you lied to me.”
He shrugged. “I also lied about Megan. The girl I got naked pictures of is Alyonushka, your cousin.”
“What? You hacked naked pictures of my cousin?”
“Dude, your cousin is seriously hot. And blonde. Besides, we’re snotbrothers. Not to mention trapped behind enemy lines. Cut me some slack.”
I clasped his hand. “On behalf of the Knights Templar, Earth accepts the offer of alliance from—what is your planet called?” I smiled a smile that was all teeth.
“We call it Earth. The gadje call it Mittelerde.” He gasped. “The Dark Tower calls your world Albion of the Ariphi branch, and mine Riphath of the Cimmerian branch.”
“Cimmerian like in Conan? Cool. But it sort of sucks to use their names for things,” I said, hissing my words through clenched teeth.
“Victors have certain … ouch! … privileges,” he grunted, words strained. “Istanbul is Constantinople. Even old New York was once … ugh!… New … Am…ster… DAMN!”
“Why’d …they …change it?” I forced the words out.
“I …! can’t…! say!” He gasped, sweat on his face.
“Guess …they … liked it …better ….that …way.”
“That….w- what… my uncle told me!” His face was turning red.
“Who?” I leaned toward him.
“My uncle. Uncle!” He was on his knees at this point. “UNCLE!”
I released my grip and then tried to wiggle my fingers to get some sensation back into my hand. He and I had been trying to break the bones in each other’s hands during our friendly handclasp and exchange of oaths. Hence the red-faced hissing and grunting.
“Okay,” I said, “So why are you here, and how did you get here? How did my mother get a message to you? What’s the situation back on Earth? My Earth. Alvin.”
“Albion,” he corrected. “The Dark Tower landed troops in California. Armies led by the ghosts of Pharaohs erected several monoliths a thousand feet tall all along the San Andreas faultline. These were for geomancy. Think of it as acupuncture on ley lines.”
Since I did not know what kind of line that meant, I just nodded.
He continued. “In a single hour, a Yukaghir warlock from Siberia named Shalugin woke the dragons in the mantle and triggered the fault line. Everything from San Francisco to Santa Barbara, from Los Angeles to San Diego fell into the sea. The death toll is estimated at thirty million. The dust cloud spread throughout the entire hemisphere, and cut off the sun, and turned the moon red as blood.”
Thirty million. That was equal to all the civilians killed in World War Two. I tried to imagine a global war compressed into a single hour, but I couldn't wrap my head around it.
I remembered what my dad had said about the Book of the Apocalypse, and felt ice in my heart.
“Despite their lack of modern firepower, the Dark Tower initially drove the U.S. Army back, winning every battle. It captured most of the Southwestern states and northern Mexico in about a month. Then, just as suddenly, for no known reason, the invasion force went insane, and began to scatter. By that time, the National Guard had been fully mobilized and the reinforced Army divisions had no problem pushing them back into the sea. The Dark Tower retreated and established a zone of twilight in the Pacific around Easter Island. The press calls it ‘The Black Dome.’ Any ships and planes that enter this Black Dome stall out. Gasoline won’t burn and gunpowder won’t ignite. We can see the enemy ships surrounding Easter Island, and the bivouacs they erected, and the pyramids of skulls heaped up from tourists and natives on the island. The military is watching them from orbital satellites, however, and shooting missiles in.”
I felt a moment of intense, almost insane, rage. “So they’re nuked? The bad guys were blasted with ICBMs?”
“Warheads don’t go off and electronics do turn off. So our battleships are just standing outside of the twilight dome, lobbing in shells. Whatever was making the soldiers of the Dark Tower insane seems to have stopped. Spy satellites show all the shells missing. The enemy just so happens to row out of the way so as to not be in the right spot to be hit just in time. The good news is that their Moebius coils are all severed.”
“What does that mean?”
“A severed gate is one where they can open the darkway on one side, causing a small hurricane, but they have lost the connection to the gates on the far side, so no reinforcements get in, and their retreat is blocked. It is a stand off. Uh. Until the Earth’s atmosphere is drained out.”
“My dad? My brothers?”
Foster shrugged. “Last I saw them, they were doing fine.”
“Fine? Do they know I’m alive?”
“Of course not. How could they know that? We all thought you were dead. You fell headfirst into a wild Moebius coil. No one can fall into the Uncreation and live. By the way, how did you live?”
“I’m an abomination. Do you know about a version of history where people cannot be killed? They yearn for death, but can’t find it?”
“I’ve heard of it, but never heard of any civilized man who went there returning alive. I knew you were not an earthboy, but — you are from Cainem? Wow. That is why you committed suicide and lived? You’re such a jerk, Ill.”
“Me a jerk? So says Jerkwad Jerkzilla Jerkenstein, Junior, Mayor of Jerktown, population: You.”
Foster said, “I thought you killed yourself when you went over the balcony on top of that glass case. And you’re busting my handsome chops about me not telling you about my longbow, which can shoot werewolf creatures of a kind not found on Earth, and you are some sort of cross between Vandal Savage and Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t know. Ask my dad. Speaking of which—how did you know I fell into the Uncreation?”
“Uh—”
“You were spying because you’re a spy, and you saw. Got it. Next question: Why the woad? Don’t they have pants on your world?”
He said, “The witchbird that released and led me here found my stuff for me, so I could get my finger into my craft horn, and take out the rune-ointment one finger plop at a time, but I could not get my cloak or tunic or anything out through the mesh. The Babylonians kept me naked.”
I blinked. “Babylonians?”
He snorted. “Boy, are you slow! This is the Tower of Babel.”
“Eh?”
“The tower to the stars that never got finished in our branches of time. That is why they all speak one language. They built the tower to take astronomical readings but also to act as a strength, a stronghold, to prevent any tribe from breaking away and forming independent nations or races. They have all the strength of the entire human world behind them. That is why nothing they try is denied to them.”
“How did my mother talk to you?”
“It was not to me, but to a Strega named Maleqorobar. An Apsara reached across the abyss between worlds with her soul and formed a face out of the twilight, using shadowmancy.”
“And how do you travel between dimensions?”
“I can’t. Not by myself. My people are clairvoyants, and can see things far off. The Wise among the Romany, the Chovexani, have power over space not unlike what the Astrologers have over time. So they can see where patches of natural twilight form, whenever the boundaries and wards of a world decay. Sunlight tends to disperse Uncreation. My people, actua
lly the Calderash, discovered a persistent twilight cloud in the sea trench, where sunlight never reaches. With the help of the Raja of the Sea, a privateer named Dakkar, I made it here. We knew Penny was in the Dark Tower.”
“Why is Penny in the Dark Tower?”
“Her mission was to rescue Ossifrage. What she was doing on Earth, no one knows. But she was captured there, and sent here. The Astrologers cannot see or anticipate her familiar, that falcon of hers, and through him, she was able to get a message out to dream-witches in Cush, part of the Wisecraft.”
“Her. All falcons are her. Tercels are he. So Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, sent you to save her?”
“Not exactly. But we have a local cell here, hidden among the Romany tribes that live in the airless reaches above the atmosphere. They have a foreverborn among them who can move freely through the Dark Tower, and so save Ossifrage.”
“Why is Ossifrage important?”
“He is a prophet from Arphaxad, a holy man of the order of Melchisedech. His is a world long ago conquered by the enemy, but he is a member of the resistance who won’t give up fighting. He is important because there is a prayer-powered mecha in the kingdom of Tharaka in the aeon of Cush that only Ossifrage can recover.”
“Mecha?”
“You know: Giant walking man-shaped robotic tank.”
“Uh. What? What?”
“You know,” Foster said impatiently. “Tranzor Z. Giantor. Robotech. A mechanical man the size of a forty-story building. A mecha. One of the things Johnny Sokko owns.”
I had just been getting used to wolfmen and witches and blood-drinking fiends. Here I thought this was a clearly fantasy-type universe, maybe with a little bit of steampunk thrown in for flavoring, and now a science fiction-type prop was showing up. And not even a reasonable science fiction-type prop. It was annoying.
I said scathingly, “I always thought tanks with legs were a stupid idea. For armored units all you need is armor, preferably with the lowest possible silhouette, and a gun turret. Treads make more sense than legs. A tall, unwieldy, unstable easily visible vehicle that Luke Skywalker can trip with a towline is not a masterpiece of military technical architecture.”
“And you blame me for the two hour discussion about the rocket-jets on Artoo Detoo? Dude, you are a total fanboy! Anyway, this prayer-powered mecha is in a world called Sasan, ruled by The Beast. Our High Council needs it for the war. I’d tell you more, but I’d have to kill you.”
“Good luck with that.”
“It’s just an expression.”
Silence fell. I sat there staring at him, wondering at all the madness of what I had thought was my life. My family was not my family and my best friend was a nudist blue spy from a Grimm’s fairytale world with Dark Elves and Light Elves and kids who drink beer at three and go on Viking raids at thirteen. And he got a pony at seven.
“Your planet sounds like a great place,” I said.
“Dude, my planet is run by Prussians. You defeated these bastards in your timeline. You need paperwork to get permission to go to the outhouse, and more paperwork to get paper to wipe your buttocks. It is illegal to get married, and illegal to have sex unless you hire a harlot with a proper eugenic certificate that matches yours, and then you don’t get to see or raise the kid. You cannot wander, cannot hunt, cannot fish, cannot hike, cannot camp, cannot use the roads without a passport, cannot walk in the woods without a permit. And I am a member of the wrong race. I was smuggled into the Nachtritters. You cannot tell anyone I am a gypsy, okay? On my planet it is illegal to be one of me.”
He sighed and shook his head, and gave me a dark look. “You know, every time you whined about Tillamook, I wanted to brain you with a hatchet. In Tillamook, you can wake up at any hour you please, put on any clothes you please, put on a pair of sturdy boots, and just start walking. You can find a highway or a deer trail, a public park or a wild mountain, and walk. Walk any direction you’d like, as long as you’d like, and just keep walking. On my world they pave over trees and flowers. The Dark Elves don’t like them. America is a fracking paradise, and Oregon is the best fracking corner of it.” Except he did not use a word that referred to hydraulic fracturing in that sentence.
“Are you bored in paradise, Ilya? You are lucky to have such an aristocratic luxury as the disease of boredom. Even the rich men of my world cannot afford it. Everyone in America is a freaking aristocrat, a member of the nobility, and you just don’t know it. No one in my family is even allowed to touch a weapon but me. And I only have the right to walk around bearing arms because I am a squire.”
I felt a little miffed by his comments. “Why do it, then? If you hate your homeworld so much, why are you in uniform, bearing arms?”
“Your world is paradise and my world is purgatory, but this world is the anus of Hell. I grade on a curve.”
That made sense of a sort. “So they took your clothes away when you got here? Mine, too.”
He pointed his thumb over his shoulder. “My garb is a special elf-weave that lets the mist pass through. It is one-of-a-kind; the hood is a tarn cap and the cloak is a tarn cape. The kid, he said he would get my clothes for me.”
I was about to ask him what a tarn was, but his last comment distracted me. “He? He who?”
“The little boy.”
“What little boy?”
“The boy-ninja dressed in black, the one with the Batman-style grappling hook, can burn open the locks.”
Abby lowered herself from some high and safe place, unharmed (Thank you, God!) and with a little gray bird of prey on her wrist. (Why me, God?) It was Wild Eyes.
Foster nodded. “Him.”
I snorted. “Boy, are you slow!”
“Eh?”
Then Foster looked embarrassed, snatched his quiver off his shoulder, and held it over his crotch.
I leaned and whispered. “About my cousin Alyonushka? You and her naked selfies? Either you marry her, or I kill you.”
It was a satisfying moment.
2. Satisfying Moments
I stared at the bird Abby was carrying. (Abby also had some stuff of mine and stuff of Foster’s she had pried out of museum cases, and Foster went to find an aisle out of sight to put on his clothing.)
The falcon had evidently been waiting outside the windows but within eyeshot, to see if we would escape death, or, in my case, escape recapture.
I said, “I have about a zillion questions about what the heck is going on here, and why all you guys from other dimensions all live in Tillamook, Oregon, of all places, and why you sent us to this chamber, but all that has to wait. Bird! You do that voodoo you do so well, and make Abby’s magic needle point at Penny, or, if you know where she is—and I suspect you must know, if you are some sort of familiar spirit of hers—we are getting her out of here. Now.”
The bird cocked her head left and right, and said, “You have not the means to free her here. It would be better to retreat, to see the cloudwalker to safety, then to gather forces and return. Meanwhile, a systematic audit of what lies in this chamber is advisable. Many things of which legends speak may be here—”
I said, “That is good advice, so it pains me to ignore it, because I am going to twist your head off your goddam neck if you do not lead me to Penny! I am young and male and violent and stupid and very much in love — so are you going to argue with me?”
The bird lowered her head and ruffled her feathers to made herself look bigger. “Your infatuation is that of a loathsome toad hungering to lick the soaring she-hawk! You—”
I snatched the bird off Abby’s wrist. I have quick hands, but, even so, it was a lucky move.
Wild Eyes drove her beak, sharp as a knife, into the fleshy part of my thumb, drawing blood. It was a pretty deep cut, and might have even severed the nerve. I reached and caught her head in my other hand, and held her beak shut.
“You poked me slightly,” I said. “I hope you feel like that accomplished something.”
Because I cleared my
mind and concentrated and the dripping blood dripped back up my wrist and collected itself back into the cut, and the cut closed itself like a tiny trapdoor closing.
“See?”
The bird glared at me. She was good at glaring. She was glarrific.
I said, “If I let go of your beak, the next thing you say is going to be, ‘Yes, sir.’ I am a man and a son of Man, and you are a beastie. Because you are the pet of the girl for whose sake I am suffering through all this rather than beating feet to the nearest exit sign, for her sake, I will spare you, but only if you serve her, and me, by permitting me to find her. Do you understand me, you wretched little feather duster?”
I took back one hand, releasing the beak. The bird said nothing, so I squeezed just a little bit.
“Yes, sir,” said Wild Eyes in a voice that dripped malice.
It was a satisfying moment.
Yes, I was picking on a critter one-hundredth of my size, which made me a bully, technically speaking. So what? At least she talked!
3. Portable Hole
Wild Eyes promised me to perform the task. I either had to trust her then and there, or twist her head off. But no girl ever falls in love with the guy who kills her pet, so I decided that trusting the murder-eyed little crazy bird was the better part of getting my way. She shot out of my hands like an irked arrow.
In the meanwhile, Nakasu had been kneeling by the broken hoop of the Moebius coil set in the floor. He had connected the socket in the hilt of the golden flail to some sort of valve or control I could not see, and he was adjusting the ruby rings on the flail rod, giving them little half turns to the left or right like someone working a combination lock. His chest was frowning in concentration. He looked like he knew what he was doing: I assume his work as a station master included wayship travel through Moebius gates, and maybe the basics of Moebius coil maintenance and operation.
Nakasu stood and twisted the flail. The whole thing, pole and triple arms and all, expanded and went limp, and he curled it up like it was a cat-o-nine-tails whip, except with only three tails, and laid it flat on the floor. He plugged the first arm into the socket at the base of the stock, while the other two arms lay to one side, like the tongue of the capital letter Q. With a surge of auroras, a dark ball appeared in the center of the ring. At first it roared, pulling Nakasu and assorted litter toward itself, but in the same instant the roar became a teakettle whistle, and the wind died.