The Crooked Letter (45 page)

The Immortal awaited his decision with unnerving patience, as though she knew what he would say.

‘Ali right,’ he said, standing up. ‘Thank you.’ The king was right: his companions looked exhausted. It would be inconsiderate to force himself upon them.

The Immortal bowed and moved forward. Her cool emerald light bathed his skin. It was as warming as sunlight on a hot day. He felt as though his bones were glowing in response.

‘This way,’ she said, indicating that he should precede her to the edge of the skyship’s nose. Crew members made way for them, scurrying in all directions back into the scaffolding. An oddly shaped ladder — a pole in the middle and rungs sticking out of either side — led up into the superstructure.

Horva waved him ahead of her. He glanced down at the others as he climbed, but only Synett was watching him go. The man tossed him a casual salute, then lay back on the floor with his arms crossed behind his head. The king was already deep in a private discussion with one of his crew, and appeared to have forgotten his guests entirely.

The ladder led up to the next level via a narrow hole in its floor. He eased warily through it, not sure what to expect. The reality was underwhelming: he saw a section of decking leading to several doors and a metal spiral staircase leading higher up still. He pulled himself through the hole, then offered a hand to help Horva up after him.

She wasn’t there. He froze with his arm outstretched, feeling like a fool. Horva had been following him; he knew it. Yet now she was gone. There were crew members staring up at him, grinning as though at a secret joke.

A door opened behind him.

‘Seth.’ He turned, feeling the back of his neck tingle. The voice belonged to Horva. He straightened.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, closing the door behind her. ‘This is your first time with one of my kind. It might make you feel better to know that I’m new to it, too. The king has only just filled us in on the details.’

‘Details of what?’ he asked, mystified.

She moved to him and took his arm. Her grip was strong, and her stare direct. Again, he saw a hint of sadness, incompletely buried. ‘We are not immortal. That’s the first thing you should know about us. We are often mistaken for being so as a result of the way we move through the realms.’

‘In reverse order to humans. That much I do know. What does this have to do with being immortal?’

‘Our path is retrograde not just in direction, but in time. We come from your future, and you come from ours. As a result of this, we would normally be unable to interact at all. Even speech would be impossible. How could you ask me a question that I had already answered? The paradoxes would tear our minds apart.’

‘But we are talking.’

‘Yes.’ She guided him along the corridor, towards the door through which she had appeared. ‘The glow you see is the side effect of a powerful charm designed to normalise our interactions. It’s a gift to us from the handsome king, and it functions in a similar fashion to Hekau. For a minute or so, you and I — and anyone around us — can occupy the same time-stream. To you the flow of time seems continuous, but you will notice that I drop in and out in odd ways. To me, the reverse is true: I see
you
coming and going while the path of
my
life remains unbroken. That way the web of causality is tangled but never severed.’ She smiled. ‘To us it seems as though you glow a beautiful gold colour.’

He struggled to get his head around this. ‘Does this mean you know what’s in my future?’

‘Yes. Those parts of your future that we have shared. And you know what’s in mine. To you, our first meeting is what to me will be our last. Beginnings and endings are going to be very complicated between our peoples.’

‘I can imagine.’

She smiled, but not with her eyes. ‘I have enjoyed sharing paths with you, Seth Castillo, although it has been difficult for both of us.’

He defied an incipient headache to ask, ‘Will you tell me what happens to me, then? Do I reach the Sisters? Do I go back to the First Realm?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘I — I’m not sure. What would happen if you told me? Would the world explode or something?’

‘Nothing so dramatic. Things have a way of working themselves out, as you will see. The Sisters strive constantly to that end. They weave all the loose threads into a seamless tapestry. They are more important than any mere dei.’

‘I doubt Yod would agree.’

‘Ah, yes. That’s something you have to look forward to.’ Her smile took on a more genuine note. ‘I feel the charm lessening. It is time we parted — but only temporarily. Knock once and go through the door. Don’t look back; it’ll only make things more complicated if you do. Be assured that I’m not leaving you yet.’

He nodded. She let go of his arm and headed for the ladder, which she proceeded to climb.

He knocked as instructed, and was told to enter by a voice that sounded suspiciously like the Immortal’s. He pushed the door open.

Inside, seated on a cushion with several other Holy Immortals, below the massive rotating terminus of the skyship’s central screw, was indeed Horva. He took a step into the room, tempted for a fleeting instant to turn around and look for the Horva behind him. He resisted the urge. At most he would see her climbing down the ladder — and what would that tell him?

Magic more subtle and complicated than any he had imagined was in effect around him.
Nothing new there,
he thought.

‘Come in,’ Horva said. ‘These are some of my companions among the Immortals.’

They were seated in a circle on the floor, and each nodded politely as he or she was named. They wore identical robes and all were hairless. Confronted by their combined green glow, he felt as though he was underwater. Their expressions were slightly embarrassed, as though he had walked in on an awkward conversation.

‘Hello,’ he said, taking a spare cushion when Horva indicated that he should sit. ‘You’re all travelling backward in time, I presume. So this, for you, is a farewell, while for me it’s an introduction. Is that right?’

‘Yes.’ Avesta, one of the male monks inclined his head. ‘We haven’t explained that to you yet, so Horva must be about to do so in our future, your past.’

‘I’ll certainly try to.’ There was a gleam in Horva’s eyes that looked suspiciously like tears. ‘You must be terribly confused, Seth. I’m sorry.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s not so bad. I’ll get used to it.’ He wondered what was going on, what had happened in Horva’s past to penetrate her monkish facade. ‘You said that you know my future.’

‘And you know mine. Again I ask you: would you tell me what lies ahead for me?’

He shrugged.
Again?

There wasn’t much to tell. ‘If you wanted me to, I would.’

‘I prefer not to know, Seth. The present is enough to deal with.’

Another enigmatic flash of grief.

‘I also asked you if you’d tell me, but you didn’t answer,’ Seth said.

‘I will tell you as much as you can bear to hear.’

His heart beat a little faster at the thought. He could think of nothing better than knowing what lay ahead. How else could he prepare for it? But what would happen if he asked her and she told him that he would be turned into a ghost? Or killed? Or worse? Could he change what was going to happen, or was he locked into it regardless of whether he knew or not?

‘Tell me if I make it to the Sisters.’

‘You do,’ she said.

‘Do they give me what I want?’

‘They do.’

Relief flooded him. ‘So everything goes back to normal.’

‘No, it does not.’

He frowned, hooked by the apparent contradiction.

‘What is “normal”?’ asked the Immortal called Armaiti. ‘There is no base state to which reality tends. All is fluid. What we perceive as permanent is merely a persistent local trend, destined to meander.’

‘As it was before I died, I meant,’ said Seth in response, picking his words with care. He couldn’t back away now; he needed to know more.

‘That time lies in our future,’ Horva reminded him. ‘We are yet to experience it.’

‘The realms were separate. The Cataclysm hadn’t happened. We turn it back, right?’

‘You do not.’

‘But that doesn’t make sense. If we go to the Sisters and they do as we ask, then surely we stop Yod’s plan in its tracks.’

‘This may be so, Seth, but what has been done cannot be so easily undone.’

‘But—’

The door opened with a bang behind him. Startled, he turned to look. Another Immortal stood in the doorway with a woman veiled from head to foot in black. The Immortal’s aura was flickering, casting strange shadows over his features.

‘Shathra, no.’

Seth turned back to Horva — she had spoken — and was stunned to see her weeping.

‘I have no choice,’ said the man. ‘If someone must take her, it should be me.’

Seth looked properly at him for the first time. He was handsome, in an ascetic way, with strong, angular features and broad ears. His expression was one of deep conflict and grief.

‘If by leaving I forgo the grace of the king, then so be it. It’ll be no great tragedy, compared to what I’ll endure if you do not come with me. Horva, we have lost so much already. Must I now lose you, too?’

‘My place is here,’ she said, ‘at Maitreya’s behest. You know that.’

‘But you could be at my side. We could travel the skies together!’

‘I know, my love, and I long for that more than ever.’ Horva visibly pulled herself together. ‘I’m sorry. More sorry than words can contain. If you leave now, you leave without me.’

The green glow flickered alarmingly. Seth could feel the charm straining to hold the timelines together. He wondered what would happen if they tore like rope under too much stress.

Horva wept openly but silently. Shathra stared at her, a man gripped by unknowable conflict.

There was a flash. He blinked, and the man Horva had called Shathra was no longer in the doorway. There was only the woman in black. She hadn’t moved throughout the confrontation between Horva and Shathra. Only now did she stir, taking a hesitant step forward.

‘Yes, come in,’ said Shathra, who was now sitting in the circle of Holy Immortals, opposite Horva, his green aura steady. ‘Please, take a seat. I was just leaving.’

‘No, Shathra,’ said Horva. ‘This is absurd.’

‘Is it? We’re being used; that much is obvious to me. We’re nothing more than puppets dancing at the Sisters’ whim. No offence,’ he added as an aside to the woman in the doorway. ‘If that is so, then I must dance.
Someone
has to do it.’

‘But what about us? What about all we have shared?’

Shathra’s expression softened. ‘We are casualties of war. Dear Horva, did you really think we could be so deeply involved yet emerge unscathed?’

Horva’s gaze dropped to her hands resting in her lap as Shathra rose to his feet. ‘Too much has changed,’ he said, to all of his companions as well as her. ‘We must move on.’

Shathra walked to the door, his aura flickering.

‘Seth.’

He glanced at Horva. Her eyes were bloodshot through the green glow. ‘What on Earth is going on?’

‘You’re going to ask me what happened in your future. Humans always do.’ Her tone was surprisingly bitter. ‘You know now what happens in mine; you have seen me lose the one I love. Would you tell me about it, if I asked you to? Would you cast the shadow of Shathra’s departure over what moments I have left with him?’

He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t really understand the situation, apart from the obvious — that emotions ran deep between the two Immortals and that they were about to be parted. Shathra’s departure in his past was now in her future. He probably wouldn’t want to tell her that it would happen like that: it would feel cruel to do so, almost deliberately malicious, no matter how much she protested that she wanted or needed to know.

Bur that seemed completely different to the issues he needed to know about: the Catastrophe, the betrayer, his fate.

‘I wouldn’t tell her,’ said the woman in the doorway. ‘Let her be blindly happy while she can. It won’t hurt as long, that way. It’ll be like pulling off a band-aid.’

Seth was frozen in his seat. The woman’s voice shot through him like a jolt of electricity.

‘Do you really think so? Well, maybe you’re right.’ Horva turned her pain-filled gaze away from Seth and indicated that the woman should take a cushion. ‘Why don’t you join us?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You can’t be.’

‘Hello, Seth.’ The veiled woman didn’t move from the door. ‘You’ve changed since I last saw you. No knife, for a start; no blood; and —’

‘Ellis?’
His brain seized as suspicion became certainty. ‘But you — you’re —’

‘Dead, yes.’

‘No — I mean, yes; of course you are. You must be, if you’re here.’ He struggled to deal with a train wreck of conflicting thoughts and emotions. Surprise, relief and concern warred for dominance. ‘But how can that be? I saw you — in the First Realm, alive.’

‘When?’

‘Just hours ago.’

‘It can’t have been me. I died days ago.’

He took a deep breath, aware that he was on the verge of babbling. The ramifications of her presence were enormous, on many levels.

‘If you’re dead,’ he said,
‘then who’s that in the First Realm with Hadrian?’

* * * *