The Crooked Letter (25 page)

‘
To
the east there is a child’s story of a giant wolf

that hungered for the peaceful realms. To the west

women sing songs of mourning for three wise

sisters who governed the old world from the heart

of the sun. To the south men share cautionary

tales about brave stone warriors who once served

the queen of the cities. To the north ugly goblins

are said to have visited the homes of those in strife

or mourning. If legends are the dreams of nations,

then these are our nightmares. What grain of truth

lies at their hearts, we may never know.’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS.
EXEGESIS 25:1

 have set my face against this city for evil and not for good, says the Lord: it shall be given into the hand of the king of Babylon, and he shall burn it with fire.”‘

Synett’s quote required no explanation. Seth too had felt compelled to make some sort of statement since arriving in Abaddon. The city was as large and filthy as any in the First Realm, and seeing it Seth realised just how protected he had been to date. If this was what Yod had made of the Second Realm, he could understand Nehelennia’s and Agatha’s fear of what Yod might do if given power over two realms. Bethel, weird and crowded though it had been, was a country village in comparison.

Oil-slick shadows slid over every surface like thunderclouds in a grey sky. Long, black roots coiled through the walls, literally holding the city together. Bulbous, branching structures reached for the light of Sheol, crowding what little exposed space there was above head-height; their bases narrowed to tapered points and balanced, precariously, on the scarred and blackened surface of the realm beneath. Holes opened in that surface, either to admit waste or emit foul yellow clouds that never quite dispersed, and Seth watched his footing closely to ensure he didn’t slip into one. Where the yellow clouds met, they joined and spiralled up through the interlinked towers to the sky. There, violent weather awaited them. Instead of clouds, the sky above Abaddon attracted vast blurs and stains that swirled and mingled like petrol in water. Tortured hurricanes snaked down in swirling whips, then retreated with deafening booms. Larger, more stable storms — which Xol called “twixters’ — clustered around the larger towers and rotated with grisly splendour through the sky.

Strangest of all, though, was what lay at the heart of the city. Visible despite the vast numbers of tapering charcoal towers that clustered around it, was a wide-based ziggurat thrusting out of the ground with gross architectural bluntness. In the real world, it would have been more than several Olympic swimming pools across and twice again as high. Its angles were severe, and its surface was a deep matte black. The oppressive edifice was clearly the focus of the city. A deep rolling rumble came from it that made his toes and belly tingle. It was big and vile and dominated the skyline from every angle.

‘Is that where Yod lives?’ he asked, fighting the pall of gloom it cast over the city.

‘Lives?’ Agatha shot back without the slightest trace of humour. ‘That
is
Yod.’

He looked back at the ziggurat, then to Xol, who nodded.

Seth could say nothing for a long while. His enemy was stranger and more terrifying than he could have imagined.

‘How do we kill it?’ he asked Xol during a brief period when the vast edifice was out of sight.

‘I don’t know,’ admitted the dimane. ‘Yod hungers, so perhaps it can starve.’

‘Is that the best you’ve come up with in all these centuries?’

Agatha looked pained. ‘It is alien, remember. Its nature is hidden from us. We do what we can.’

‘The realm is in even bigger trouble than I thought.’

She didn’t argue the point.

They continued along tightly confined paths through districts Seth assumed were slums. Creatures of all shapes and sizes gathered in them, some squabbling over scraps of translucent refuse that peeled from the bases of the towers, others prowling in outlandish gangs with forbidding attitudes. A few accosted strangers in incomprehensible tongues. A bare minority did nothing at all, except — or so it seemed to Seth — to imitate Barbelo’s state of transcendent immobility.

Hekau was both a blessing and a curse in such an environment. Seth caught snatches of words that half made sense from those attempting to keep their conversations a secret. That wasn’t a problem. What
was
a problem was the combined output of numerous hawkers and beggars who wanted nothing more than to be completely understood by as many people as possible. It didn’t help that he had no idea what they were trying to sell or beg for. That crucial information was lost in the ceaseless babble filling the street.

Every ten minutes or so a slender white shape glided silently across the sky, glowing like a meteor. These Seth knew to be fomore, one of the many strange life-forms native to the Second Realm. The exit from the underground tunnels had been guarded by seven such creatures, as Nehelennia had warned would be the case. Skeletal wraiths with long, eyeless faces and teeth resembling those of a deep-sea angler fish, they had been easier to evade than Seth had feared. A distraction cast by Xol sent them sweeping away from the entrance while Seth and the others had scurried through under cover of a glamour into the city.

The fomore sent waves of misgiving through the populace whenever they appeared. The scruffier elements ducked for cover where they could find it and a hush fell over the streets. Only once did Seth see the fomore actually do anything to any of the denizens of Abaddon, and that was in response to a fearfully large creature, like a bulldozer on legs, with a wide, hammer-shaped head that bellowed obscenities at the sky. Two of the fomore swooped upon it, raking its thick skin with needle-sharp claws. It tried to bat them away, without success. Either the claws were poisoned or the lines they cast over the creature’s skin formed some sort of inhibitory charm. Either way, the creature almost immediately quietened. Staggering slightly, it found a nearby wall and slumped against it, capable of little more than a bemused wail. Within seconds, it had slumped into a drift of brownish dust that the wind picked at and scattered afar.

Satisfied, the fomore had returned to their patrol, ignoring the looks of hatred cast at them by the bystanders.

Police,
Seth thought, more startled by the mundanity of the fomore’s function than by their supernatural appearance. Some things, it seemed, never changed.

‘Through here.’ Agatha peeled back a charred rubbery sheet and guided them into a V-shaped trench that wound around the bases of several lumpy dwellings. The trench sloped downward, and its floor was liberally coated with tiny gelatinous beads that reminded Seth of fish eggs and made slight popping noises when trodden on. He tried to avoid them, but there were too many. His feet were soon coated with goo that smelled of antiseptic. Although he had yet to see evidence of bacterial infections in the Second Realm, he instinctively avoided touching the slime with his hands.

The sound of the crowd fell behind them, muffled by the walls of the trench. More of the ragged, blackened sheets hung overhead, swaying in an unfelt breeze. Seth kept his revulsion carefully in check, although it was difficult at times; he felt as though he was crawling through the guts of an enormous beast, competing for space with all manner of parasites. Even Agatha was starting to look a little frayed around the edges. Quite literally. There was a blurriness to her that he hadn’t seen before, a lack of focus, as though she was liable at any moment to dissolve into nothing. Was that what happened in the Second Realm, he wondered, when one pushed oneself too hard? In his world, hearts failed or arteries burst. In the afterlife, perhaps exhaustion meant risking literal disintegration of the self.

Or maybe it was just the way of her kind. Agatha wasn’t human. That fact was easy to forget, since she seemed perfectly normal to him. She looked barely his age, in fact, but her skill fighting the egrigor in Bethel had impressed him.

During their subterranean voyage from the pipe, Seth had broached the subject of her nature with Xol.

‘She is a defender of the realm,’ the dimane had told him. ‘To your eyes, she is beautiful. Yes?’

He confessed that she was.

‘To mine also — although were we to describe her to each other, our descriptions would not match. We see her the way she sees the realm. She reflects her love of her home so all may witness it. That is the way of her people.’

Walking through the slums of Abaddon, Seth wondered what justified Agatha’s opinion that the Second Realm was beautiful and worthy of love. All he had seen so far was strangeness and threat. But the thought immediately made him feel churlish. Someone stuck in a rough area of Sydney or Los Angeles might similarly wonder what people saw in the First Realm. He’d hardly seen enough on which to base an informed opinion.

Agatha glanced over her shoulder at him, as though she could tell he was thinking about her. He clenched his left fist and concentrated firmly on the rotating squares on his forearm.

‘Where are we going?’ he asked.

‘I’m taking you to the kaia.’

‘Where are they, exactly?’

‘Along here, if my memory serves me correctly.’

They turned left at a Y-shaped intersection. Something buzzed at Seth’s neck and he brushed it away, cursing in annoyance. Who had expected flies in the afterlife, too?

‘Will they be able to help us?’ he persisted.

‘My understanding of them is that they will side against Yod.’

‘It beats me why anyone is on
its
side,’ Seth said. ‘After all, it’s not making things terribly pleasant.’

‘There are always those,’ said Xol, ‘who plan to profit from disaster. Dominion over a ruin is better than being a slave.’

‘Do you believe that?’

The dimane shook his head. ‘Not I. Not any more.’

‘What about Barbelo?’ he asked Synett, walking moodily silent behind him. ‘Any word?’

‘None,’ was the simple reply.

They walked on in silence.

Two vast towers made fangs of the skyline under the bar of a nearby T-junction. From a distance they looked like sentinels, watching over the city; close up, they looked more like cathedral spires, yearning for the sublime. A broad square marched off into the distance, populated only by works of art resembling stocky obelisks. A war memorial, Hadrian thought.

The sun had begun its slow creep down the sky when they came to a halt. He felt a slight chill as shadows lengthened around him. Behind them, along the street they had followed, a vast bank of clouds was building, subtly encroaching on the brick-and-glass landscape below. The sun caught the cloud bank at an angle, casting it into stark relief. Light gleamed off a distant glass building.

‘Storm coming,’ he said, wondering if he could feel the electricity rising, or if that was something else. The Cataclysm, perhaps.

‘Sure is,’ Kybele replied. She wasn’t wasting any time. Barely had the car stopped than she was out the door and striding purposefully to where two blackened wrecks lay tangled together in the centre of the intersection. ‘This configuration is not optimal.’ She clapped her hands, and seven Bes hurried past Hadrian to do her will. There were more of them every time he counted, as though they sprang whole from the Galloi’s pockets while no one was looking. ‘Clear this mess and prepare the ground. We don’t have much time.’

‘What are you planning to do?’ Hadrian asked her.

‘More magic’

‘I guessed that. What sort?’

She glanced at him, but her attention soon returned to the skyscrapers around them. Although they showed no sign of the giant eyes that afflicted so many of the towers in the cityscape, he still felt uneasy.

‘This is a war,’ Kybele said. ‘I don’t know if you fully appreciate it, even after all I’ve shown you. It’s not just about you and your brother. It’s not about the people who died here. This is about power, Hadrian, nothing else, and power turns around minutiae. The war began when Lascowicz drew the line. Someone had to throw the first stone, and that stone just happens to be Ellis. I intend to throw the stone back by rescuing her. So don’t take it personally, either way. Understand? And don’t be offended if I don’t explain every step we take before we take it, because I don’t have time to accommodate your feelings.’

He nodded. A flush crept up his neck. He felt as though he’d been slapped down by his brother. ‘Got it.’

She glanced fleetingly at the growing thunderhead, then turned back to the Bes. The half-men had stood patiently by.

‘Get a move on, you,’ she snapped, clapping her hands together. The sound echoed off building fronts like a thunderbolt. ‘The end of the world won’t wait for us to be ready, you know.’

* * * *

The sun seemed to sink faster than it should. Loud scrapes and crashes came from where the Bes busied themselves separating the two burnt cars. Hadrian glanced at what they were doing, then looked away. There were bodies in the wreckage, twisted and blackened by heat but recognisably human. He’d seen enough death.