The Wheel of Osheim

  ‘If you would all be so kind as to afford my great- nephew and me a little privacy.’ Garyus raised his voice to carry. The remnants of his court began to move toward the doors. ‘Even you, Mary.’ This to the most senior of his nurses, a solid matron who seemed to think herself indispensable. ‘And gentlemen – if you will.’ He nodded to the guardsmen flanking him. ‘All my guards.’

  The captain approached, boots heavy on the polished floor. ‘Steward, it’s our place to protect you.’

  ‘If I die in your absence Prince Jalan is to be demoted to peasant. There, I should be safe enough now?’

  The guard captain frowned, the word ‘but’ struggling to get off his lips.

  ‘And really, I insist,’ Garyus said.

  Five minutes later, after the guard had double-checked each dark corner, we were alone.

  ‘I had hoped to find the Red Queen here,’ Luntar said. ‘Now it seems I must follow her to Slov.’

  I resisted the obvious jibe that he should have foreseen this circumstance. No doubt he had interfered with Grandmother’s fate in the past and denied himself further visions of her future. That or the Silent Sister guarded her from such foretelling.

  ‘When must you leave?’ The day before he arrived would have suited me. I still found Luntar deeply unsettling, the rawness of his burned flesh demanded a reaction and if it couldn’t get one from him it certainly created something very close to pain in me. The Silent Sister had looked so far into our bright future that it had blinded her in one eye. Luntar had looked beyond even that and been burned head to toe by what he saw. To hear Garyus speak of it, somewhere not too far ahead of us the impossible brilliance of a thousand Builders’ Suns consumed our all our futures.

  ‘I will leave immediately we conclude our discussion here,’ Luntar said. ‘It’s a long walk, and no horse will bear me.’

  ‘Tell me…’ I glanced at Garyus, but he waved for me to continue. ‘Tell me, the future that burned you, that you say is coming, is this the end the Red Queen fears? The doom the Builders set upon us when they worked their science and changed the world?’ I tried not to make it sound like an accusation – but it was. Luntar and his kind had been cracking reality for generations, driving us to the edge as they pulled more and more magic through the fabric of the world.

  Beside me Garyus nodded his heavy head. His gaze rested upon the cube of white plasteek in his lap – the box of ghosts that Luntar had given him.

  ‘There’s nothing we can do?’ I asked. Just somewhere safe to run to would be good.

  Luntar set both hands to his face and slid them wetly toward his brow as if pushing away some weariness. ‘In some futures it’s the cracking of the world that ends us, darkness and light, the elements taking on monstrous forms, the very substance of which we are made unravelling… In other futures it’s the light of the Builders’ weapons that scorches us from the earth.’

  ‘Shit.’ I had seen that light. I tried to take the whine from my voice and sound more like Snorri would. ‘Twice now in the space of a year Builders’ Suns have lit. I heard of one in Gelleth on my trip north, and then in Liba I saw one with my own eyes, burning the desert. Who’s using these dead men’s weapons against us, and why?’

  ‘Death isn’t what it was.’ Luntar extended his skinless arm and studied it.

  ‘The Builders are dead. They went to dust a thousand years ago.’ But as I said it I recalled Kara’s words. The völva had told me on her boat that Baraqel and Aslaug were once human, Builders who had escaped into spirit when the world burned. She had claimed that others copied themselves into their machines before the end. Whatever that meant. ‘It can’t be the Builders? Even if they weren’t dead why would they wish us harm?’

  ‘Do you recall how the Builders brought magic into the world in the first place, Prince Jalan?’

  ‘Turned a wheel … I think that’s how Grandmother described it. They made it so a man’s will could change what’s real. But the Day of a Thousand Suns came and the wheel kept turning with nobody to stop it – the magic getting stronger.’

  ‘That’s more or less it,’ Luntar said. ‘But this wheel isn’t just a figure of speech. It’s not just words to paint a picture we can understand. There is a wheel. In—’

  ‘Osheim.’ The word escaped my lips despite strict instructions not to emerge.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘These explosions in Gelleth and Liba though—’

  ‘Ask the ghosts,’ Luntar said. ‘It’s their work.’ And then he was no longer there.

  ‘How?’ I stepped forward, waving an arm through the space the burned man had so recently occupied.

  ‘The same way any other man leaves,’ Garyus said. ‘He just made us forget it.’

  ‘Well damn that! Why couldn’t he just stay and answer my bloody question? Why the hell be so mysterious about everything?’

  With effort Garyus raised his head and smiled up at me. ‘I always felt those stories your Nanna Willow told you boys would have been a lot shorter if there had been some plain speaking in them. But perhaps you know the answer.’

  ‘Bloody future-sworn!’ I almost spat on the floor but Grandmother’s presence still haunted the throne room too strongly for that. Luntar saw a future that might be better than those that had burned him but if he steered us toward it, it would start to retreat, and if he answered our questions the whole possibility might evaporate like a morning mist. Even giving us the box would have blinded him to our paths now, making his vision less clear. Do nothing and see everything that will be with perfect and impotent clarity – or reach out to change things and like a hand touching water destroy the reflection of tomorrow. The frustration of it would drive me mad.

  ‘Open the box?’ Garyus placed the box in question on the small table I’d carried over. I placed a lantern beside it: afternoon had shaded toward evening and the shadows multiplied in every corner. ‘Open the box…’ He tapped his fingers on the polished surface.

  ‘That’s been known to go wrong in the past,’ I said.

  Garyus raised an eyebrow at that. ‘Pandora?’

  ‘All the ills of the world.’ I nodded. ‘Besides, he said it’s full of ghosts. That’s the case made for burying it right there.’

  ‘He also said we should ask them our questions.’

  I looked at the box and found my curiosity had dried right up.

  ‘Are you scared, Jalan?’ Garyus looked up at me, the light and shadow conspiring to make a monster of him. His deformity had that character – innocent one moment, pitiable even, the next sinister, malign. At those times I had no doubt he was twin to the Silent Sister.

  ‘Scared doesn’t cover it.’ The plasteek looked more like bone in the lantern light. Visions of Hell bubbled at the back of my mind and I wondered just how much of that place the art of the Builders might fit into one small box. ‘Petrified.’

  ‘Makes you feel alive, doesn’t it?’ And Garyus opened the box.

  ‘Empty!’ A laugh burst from me, somehow small and hollow in the loneliness of the hall.

  ‘It does seem to—’ Garyus drew his hand back with an oath. One red fingerprint remained where he had touched the lid.

  ‘Blood?’ I asked, tilting my head to study the mark.

  Garyus nodded, one finger in his mouth. ‘The thing bit me!’

  As we watched, the crimson print faded, the blood drawn into the substance of the plasteek, leaving no stain. Something flickered in the air above the open box. A figure, there then gone, misty, as if formed and lost in a cold breath. Another came, flickering into being, a man’s shape, maybe eighteen inches high, gone.

  ‘Kendeth.’ The word came from the box, an ageless voice, calm and clean.

  A host of figures now, men, women, young, old, each twisting into the next.

  ‘Stop…’ Garyus raised a hand toward the box and as he did so the flickering motion ceased, just one figure there now, a pale ghost, the lines of the table visible through his body.

  ‘James Alan
Kendeth,’ the ghost said, not looking at either one of us but rather at some distant point between.

  ‘You’re the ghost of my ancestor?’ Garyus asked.

  The ghost frowned, flickered, and replied. ‘I am a library entry for the data echo of James Alan Kendeth. I can answer questions. To access the full simulation requires access to a net-terminal.’

  ‘What’s it saying?’ I asked. Some of the words made sense, the rest might as well be another language.

  Garyus shushed me. ‘Are you a ghost?’

  The ghost frowned then smiled. ‘No. I’m a copy of James Alan Kendeth. A representation of him based on detailed observations.’

  ‘And James himself?’

  ‘He died more than a thousand years ago.’

  ‘How did he die?’

  ‘A thermonuclear device detonated above the city in which he lived.’ A moment of sorrow on the ghost’s pale face.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘An explosion.’

  ‘A Builders’ Sun?’

  ‘A fusion device … so like the sun, yes.’

  ‘Why did the Builders destroy themselves?’ Garyus stared at the little ghost, floating above its empty box, his great brow mounded above the intensity of his eyes.

  The ghost flickered and for a split second I saw its skin bubble as if remembering the heat. ‘No reason that matters. An escalation of rhetoric. One domino falling against the next and in a few hours everything was ashes.’

  ‘Why would they do it again, now?’ Garyus asked. ‘Why destroy us?’

  ‘To survive.’ Our distant ancestor looked from Garyus to me and back to Garyus as if noticing us as people for the first time, not just voices with questions. ‘The continued use of will is unbalancing…’ He paused, his gaze now on some distant thing in some other place. ‘…the Rechenberg equation – that’s what they call it – it governs the change, what you people call the “magic”. We called it magic too, to be honest. Maybe one person in ten thousand understood it. The rest of us just knew that the scientists had changed how the world worked and bang, magic became possible, superpowers! It wasn’t like it is today though – it was harder to use – we had training and—’

  ‘Our magics are unbalancing your equation.’ Garyus cut across him. ‘Why kill us?’

  ‘If everyone dies there’ll be no more magic used. The equation may balance itself. The change may stop. The world might survive and the data-echoes held in the deepnet would be preserved.’

  ‘You’d sacrifice us for echoes? But … you’re not real. You’re not alive,’ I said. ‘You’re memories in machines?’

  ‘I feel real.’ The ghost-James set ghost-hands to his transparent chest. ‘I feel alive. I wish to continue. In any event, if we don’t destroy you then you’ll only destroy yourselves and us with you.’

  He had a point there but I had little sympathy for any point that might impale me. ‘So why are we still here? Why only two explosions?’

  ‘There is disagreement. There isn’t a majority in favour of the nuclear solution. Yet. Gelleth was an accident. Hamada was a test that went wrong.’

  ‘Why are you telling us all this?’ I wouldn’t have been so forthcoming in his position.

  ‘I’m a library entry. Answering is my purpose.’

  ‘But somewhere … in the machines … is a full copy of James Alan Kendeth? One with opinions and desires?’

  The ghost nodded. ‘Even so.’

  ‘Can the Wheel be turned back?’ Garyus asked with sudden urgency.

  A pause. ‘You’re referring to IKOL facility at Leipzig?’ James sounded as if he were reading from a book.

  ‘The Wheel of Osheim.’

  James Alan Kendeth nodded. Another pause. ‘It’s a particle accelerator, a circular tunnel over two hundred miles long. The idea of a steering-wheel for the universe is a simplified way of understanding the change that the IKOL facility effected and continues to drive. The engines at IKOL turn a hypothetical wheel, a dial if you like, changing the default settings for reality. The machinery in the collision chamber would dwarf your cathedrals. In short it is a machine, not a wheel that can be turned.’

  ‘It’s a machine!’ I seized on the idea. ‘You’re a machine. You turn it off!’

  ‘The system is isolated to prevent interference. To approach it physically would be … difficult. The Rechenberg field fluctuates wildly as one approaches.’

  ‘Oh well.’ I reached for the box, eager to shut it. Every bad story that ever began starts with Osheim, and I knew just how bad things grew as you approached it. I would put my faith in Grandmother to save us. ‘Nothing can be done then.’ My hand grew cold before my fingers even reached the box, as if I’d plunged it into cold water.

  ‘Entanglement detected.’ The original voice of the box, neither male, nor female, nor human. Our ancestor’s ghost flickered out of being to be replaced by an elderly narrow-faced man. He stood before us for a moment then faded into a younger woman with short hair and eyes ringed with dark circles, no beauty but striking. The man returned, then the woman. Both seemed familiar somehow.

  ‘Stop,’ I said, and the woman stayed.

  ‘Asha Lauglin,’ the ageless voice spoke and fell silent. The woman looked up and met my eyes.

  ‘H … how did you die?’ I withdrew my hand. Something in her gaze scared me.

  ‘I didn’t die,’ she said.

  ‘You’re just an echo, a story in a machine, we know that. How did the real Asha die?’

  ‘She didn’t die.’ Asha glanced at Garyus then returned her gaze to me.

  ‘What happened to her on the Day of a Thousand Suns?’

  ‘She transmuted by force of will. Her identity became mapped into negative energy states in the dark energy of the universe.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘She became incorporeal.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A spirit.’

  ‘A dark spirit.’ I stared at the woman. ‘Aslaug?’

  ‘She became trapped in the mythology of the humans who repopulated the northern regions, yes. The belief of many untrained minds proved stronger than her will.’

  I thought of Aslaug, Loki’s daughter, lie-born, her spider-shadow and the monstrous form of her that day when she came through the wrong-mages’ door in Osheim. ‘I’m sorry.’

  The Builder-ghost shrugged. ‘It’s not a unique fate. How many of us are trapped in the stories told about us, or by us?’ She gave me a hard and quizzical stare that reminded me still more strongly of Aslaug.

  I didn’t much like the implication and started to bluster. ‘Well I’m not—’

  ‘There’s a story about a charming prince trying to snare you even now, Jalan. There’s another story you tell yourself that might pull you along a very different path.’

  ‘You’re very talkative for a library entry.’ I moved again to shut the box.

  ‘I never liked to play by the rules, Jalan.’ She gave that dark smile I knew so well.

  A pounding on the great doors of the throne room drowned out any reply I had and the head of the palace guard pushed through without waiting for a reply.

  ‘Steward, Marshal, the city is under attack! The dead are in the river!’

  12

  The attack came along both shores of the Seleen, heralded by the arrival of a raft of corpses floating with the current. The bodies, more than a hundred of them, looked by the remnants of their colours to be war-dead from the Orlanth advance into Rhone. When the boat crews had gone out to intercept it, it quickly became apparent that mire-ghouls had insinuated themselves among the mass, hanging onto the edges, just their dark heads above the water, or lying flat on top of the tangled bodies, blowpipes held close and ready.

  ‘Have the Iron Hoof join us at the Morano Bridge!’ I shouted orders as I rode toward the Horse Gate to depart the palace. After being made marshal I’d secured a fine charger named Murder, a huge beast and fiery with it. Damned hard to control, though, and on the point of breaking into a gallop
at every moment. ‘Tell Prince Martus to keep the Seventh at the palace gates until we know the situ— Whoa!’ I wrenched Murder’s head around and leaned forward as he tried to rear. ‘Tell him to send runners to all the wall towers.’

  ‘Yes, Marshal!’ The palace guard captain had followed me from the throne room with five of his men, receiving, and hopefully remembering, the orders I reeled off as I collected Murder from the stables. Now, with Captain Renprow and ten message riders from the regular palace guard around me, I waved for the gates to be opened. We would make for the Morano Bridge, the best viewpoint from which to see a great length of the Seleen’s banks, both east and west, upstream and down. The reports I had were already half an hour old: where the fighting might be now and what situation would greet us I couldn’t say. The Iron Hoof was nothing more than a drinking club for the richest sons of the aristocracy these days, but they had all been officers in the cavalry before Grandmother disbanded it, and whilst lancers would be of little use in the city, they would at least be able to get where they were going in a hurry.

  I spotted one of the house-guards, Double, heading off on some errand and sent him back to Roma Hall with orders to secure the place. He was the youngest of Father’s house-guards and probably the only one still fit enough to give account of himself in a fight. ‘Don’t let anyone you don’t know in, dead or alive! Especially dead. Even if you do know them!’

  Double set off back to the hall at a run and I took a last glance around. The shadows of Milano House stretched toward the Inner Palace, as if Hertet were reaching for his mother’s throne. The sun burned low on the walls, without heat. The day was dying on me. ‘Let’s go!’

  Within moments we were clattering beneath the gate arch and racing off along Kings Way, our hooves striking sparks from the cobbles. For the next several minutes the business of riding at speed along roads variously packed, narrow, winding, or all three at once, occupied our attention. Flattening a peasant or two is all well and good, but if you’re in a hurry to get somewhere it can slow you down. Also, in Vermillion peasants are thin on the ground and you’re likely to have the injured party’s father or guild or whatever camped outside the palace gates the next day seeking compensation. Or worse, justice.