Penult (16 page)

Sure, it would make me miserable and
grease my skids back to the Liminality, but once there, what
motivation would I have to fight Penult? I would throw every ounce
of my will into tracking down her soul. And if she was dead, I had
no idea where a soul like hers would end up. Would it be the Deeps,
or was that just another way station between Root and whatever lay
beyond? I did not know enough about the afterworlds to have the
faintest clue.

Wendell would have to offer me some
smidgeon of hope to keep me in his thrall. A hostage situation
served his cause better than murder. They could keep quiet until I
had been driven back to the Liminality before spilling the beans.
And then they could milk me with threats of torture and
pain.

To think that was the best case
scenario I could conjure for an involuntary disappearance. It was
better to hope that her leaving was voluntary, but my fear would
not allow it, and I sank deeper and deeper into that garden
chair.

What if Edmund had followed us back to
Brynmawr? Inverness was infested with Sedevacantists who knew Karla
and could have spotted her on the street and us onto the train.
What if he had her in one of his basement dungeons ready to do to
her whatever he had done with Isobel? This was the possibility that
seized my brain and refused to release it.

I began to doubt that Karla would have
stayed away voluntarily without a word to the ladies or a note to
me, missing her best friend’s funeral, leaving her favorite shoes
as well as well as most of the rest of her meager mementoes and
possessions behind. She had been taken, that much was
clear.

These grave thoughts stirred only
favorable feelings for the Friends of Penult. All they had ever
asked of me was to stay in this world, mind my own business, and be
happy. What was wrong with that? They seemed now like the good guys
in this situation. Would they be willing to help me get Karla back?
It would seem in their best interest to keep me happy, to keep me
out of Root. But how would I even contact them? I had that card,
but no address, no phone number. Were they watching me right now?
Would it suffice for me to simply pray to them for help?

I have no religion. I’m not one to
pray, but I did my best.

“
Please. Whoever’s
listening. Help me get Karla back and I’ll never go back to Root,
not ever, if I can help it. I just want her to be safe. That’s all
that matters. Please! Help her.”

Dusk fell over the garden and I barely
noticed. I sank deeper and deeper into that wicker chair. Its
strands came to life and wrapped around my legs, tugging at my
soul. Soon the garden itself was boiling with roots reaching ever
upward.

Helen came outside and noticed nothing
strange. She saw only a drunk kid sitting in the dark. She helped
me to my feet and my body, untethered, responded. The roots let me
leave for now.

I had drunk too much vodka to walk a
straight path down the flagstones. Helen and Jess helped me into
the house, up the attic stairs and tucked me into bed.

As I lay on the futon, I prayed again
to the Friends of Penult, but before I could finish, the roots had
come for me in force. They slithered up through the floor boards
and smothered my soul in their prickly embrace.

Liminality, ready or not, here I
come.

Chapter 14:
Ravaged

Roots converged like guided missiles,
joining to tear my consciousness free of my earthly body and drag
it through the seams that separated our world from the Liminality.
I descended through the netherworld between, twisting, tumbling,
regaining my flesh at the bottom of a deep, dank pit that had the
feel of a basement exposed by a bomb.

Shaggy shreds of torn, inert root
jutted from the walls, wafting in the draft. The foul vapors of
tunnels infested with Reapers vented through the gaps.

But I had no desire to enter the
underworld. The surface was all that mattered to me now, as it was
with any Hemisoul who knew of its existence. I wanted out of this
ragged pit.

As with every entry in the Liminality
I was naked, but I did not bother to weave myself any clothes. I
just got up and started climbing. When I reached the top and pulled
myself over the rim, the sight that greeted me made me disoriented
and queasy with doubt.

Where was I? I recognized nothing. I
expected the pitted plains—that scrubby veldt dotted with
sinkholes. What I found was a jumbled mess, a wasteland of
shattered rock and shredded roots, heaped and churned and gashed
with gulleys. Chunks as large as city blocks had been ripped apart,
upended and piled up.

Here and there, a few undisturbed
patches of plain loomed over the devastation like steep-shored
islands. In the midst of each, lone obelisks jabbed into the sky
like radio towers.

I was drawn to them like a wasp to
cola. I scrambled over jumbles of shredded root and shattered rock
to reach the nearest island. I climbed its sheer face, using loops
of root as handholds and footholds, hauling myself up onto what was
once a flat patch of ground, but had now become a
mini-plateau.

The shrubs and soil on top were
undisturbed apart from some bulges in the ground that ran radially
out from the pillar. It stood on leg-like buttresses that jabbed
deep beneath the soil into the bedrock and roots below, each as
thick as my thighs. The main shaft reminded me of a neo-modern
totem pole, its segments bearing abstract patterns, no faces. I
placed my hand on the pillar and found it uncomfortably warm. Some
patches were translucent and gave off a faint glow.

I looked out over the sea of
devastation that had been the pitted plains. Parts of the horizon
looked sort of familiar. But entire mountain ranges and mesas were
missing from the landscape I remembered.

I could see no trace of the sprawling
metropolis of castles and towers and spires that Luther had
constructed at the base of the foothills. The land, it seemed, had
opened up and swallowed it. Luthersburg, or its surface annex at
least, was no more.

Whatever had torn apart the plains had
taken down many of the foothills and even some of the larger peaks,
reducing them to low mounds of rubble. The nearest remnants were
studded with broken tree trunks, many of them now raising their
roots to the sky. Where the mesas had been, only stubs of rock
remained.

My heart leapt at the sight of the
familiar bluffs that flanked the opening to my favorite sanctuary,
the hollow ringed by cliffs with its pond and the creek that poured
from a hanging valley

At least now I had a destination. My
refuge remained intact, or so it appeared from a distance. I
climbed off the island and lowered myself back into the
chaos.

It was a hard slog over and around
ridges and pits. In some of the deeper rifts I could see some
evidence of healing. Some of the more motile roots had infiltrated
the wounds and meshed together. Much of the root mass closer to the
surface was now inert matter, impervious to my attempts at weaving.
Somehow, it had been killed, like flesh deprived of a blood supply
for too long. Much of it was already crumbling into
dust.

In some places the roots were so
jungle-like I could make no headway and had to backtrack. Some
patches were unconsolidated. I would step on them and just sink
into the tangles like quicksand and had to practically swim back to
more solid terrain.

The sound and stink of the tunnels now
mixed with the breezes that swept over these ruins of the pitted
plains. No longer was the surface insulated from the Reapers’ foul
odors and utterances.

I came to an area littered with the
carcasses of insects and Reapers alike—most likely a battlefield.
Many still bore saddles and riding platforms. I climbed atop the
shell of a dragonfly and reached into a saddlebag. Inside, I found
bits of manna, the sweet cracker-like food that the Dusters relied
on for sustenance. The stuff looked like scabs, but had a nutty,
sweet flavor, sort of like toasted sesame with a hint of
honey.

The thorax of the insect was pierced
with several spears with long, flanged tails. Conical black points
transitioned into four blades that ran down most the length of each
shaft. They looked like giant arrows, but far too large to have
been shot by any ordinary bow.

Something moaned in the near distance.
I looked up to see a lone Reaper a stone’s throw away, sniffing
among the ruins. Whatever barriers had kept the wild Reapers
underground had now been breached. All of the Liminality, above and
below, had become their hunting ground.

I moved away over ridges and into
depressions that alternated like waves in a frozen sea. Chunks of
plain had been overturned, rotated and crushed. I couldn’t imagine
the scale of violence this entailed. This was far beyond the worst
that could happen in an earthly earthquake. The Richter scale did
not suffice to capture its magnitude.

Had Karla seen all this? And still she
wanted me to come back? What did she think I could possibly do?
Make it all better? This was way beyond my ability to deal
with.

Though, maybe. Had I come earlier,
before all this went down. Might there have been a chance to
prevent it?

Whatever the case, it was too late
now.

Once I reached the bluffs and passed
between them, the destruction lessened. The land was far from
undisturbed, but the damage here was reduced to seams and rumples
no worse than what you might see after a significant, but more
ordinary earthquake.

The once mighty waterfall that had
tumbled through a notch in the hanging valley had been reduced to a
trickle. Boulders and rock slides had tumbled down from and reduced
many of the surrounding cliffs.

The creek still flowed weakly, but it
was truncated, plunging into the underworld at a new waterfall at
the brink of a deep crevasse. I was glad to see the pond remained,
a little shrunken but intact. Across from it, stood the weeping
willow I had woven from a mere stick stuck in the ground, looking
strong with all of its boughs in place.

I found what remained of my throne of
mud along the high banks of the pond, partially filled with debris.
My old sword remained where I had left it stuck in the mud. If it
had been woven of roots, it probably would have come apart long
ago. And if it was made of steel it would have rusted. But this
blade was made of something different, some strange unearthly
alloy. It bore a light coating of tarnish but no rust, and its
blade remained as sharp as the day I found it deep in the tunnels
of Root.

Not that sharpness mattered for such a
weapon. I had rarely used to slash or impale anything. I mainly
used it to focus the weird inner energy, that manifestation of
projected will, that some of us in the Liminality are able to
harness and wield.

It was nice to feel that hilt in my
hands again. Urszula and the Dusters had their scepters, which were
nothing more than carefully selected sticks. I had my sword and was
glad of it.

I felt less naked somehow holding that
blade in my hands. Nevertheless, I took the opportunity to finally
weave myself some clothes. There was an outcropping of live roots,
exposed along the bank of the pond that I had mined for raw
material before. Unlike those I had found on the shattered plains,
these tendrils responded instantly to my desires, shrinking,
multiplying, re-arranging themselves into my standard dark blue
hoodie and a pair of black jeans.

I pulled them on and took a seat on my
‘throne’ after sweeping out some of the accumulated debris. So here
I was, back in the Liminality, finally honoring the wishes Wendell
and Zhang and Karla. Shouldn’t there be a welcoming party? Instead,
it was just me and that lonely Reaper.

I wondered what had happened to the
thousands of souls that Luther had encouraged to come up to the
surface, not to mention all the Freesouls and Hemisouls of Frelsi.
This cataclysm had to have caused a lot of human
casualties.

The skies were vacant as well. There
was not a Duster to be seen from here to the horizon.

I listened to the wind whistle down
the gullies, to the distant trickle of water, the far-off groaning
of a Reaper.

By being here, I suddenly realized
that I had violated my promise to the Friends of Penult. Did they
even know yet? Would that void the terms of my ivory card?
Shit.

For that matter, how would Wendell
know that I had fulfilled his request? I needed to find Zhang
somehow. I needed to get up to Frelsi or what was left of it.
Someone needed to know I had come, if nothing else, to get Wendell
to ease up on my friends, if he indeed was the one responsible for
inflicting all that misery on us.

But then again, was it better to keep
mum and hope the Friends of Penult didn’t learn of my coming? Maybe
this was a one shot deal, my coming here. Maybe I would never be
back again and the Friends of Penult would be none the
wiser.

I gazed out past the bluffs at the now
rumpled and barren plains. Had Karla seen all this? I couldn’t
believe she had been in such a panic for me to come back here. What
could I possibly have done? She acted like I was some kind of
superhero.