Somewhither: A Tale of the Unwithering Realm (64 page)

“You do not.”

“I speak it badly. It means Congregate.”

“Close enough. Congregation. On Earth, the Western Church calls the Ecclesia by another name, the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office.”

“The Inquisition?”

“Yeah. Bet you didn't expect that.”

“Not funny. But wait a minute. If you did not know I was an unkillable super-thing, why did the Wise Arses send you to look after me?”

“They sent me to Earth, but I was supposed to stop the Professor from opening a Dark Gate, in case he betrayed us. Which he did.”

“He works for the Dark Tower?”

“No, but — well, it’s complicated. There are some dirty politics inside the Wise, like I said. Adramelech was losing his mind for a while. Exposure to twilight will do that to you. (Well, maybe not you.) His mission was to get the plans on how to build a Moebius coil and return them to the Nachtritters. But he hates the Dark Tower. Maybe too much.”

“But you said you were spying on me, not on the Professor. So are you like a double agent or something? Why did the Wisecraft send you to watch me?”

“I was not watching you, I was supposed to watch
over
you. But they are not the ones who told me to keep an eye on you.”

“Then who?”

“Your mother.”

“What?”

“Your mother asked me to keep an eye on you.”

I stared at him dumbly. “Why — why her?”

“She yet lives. Marusya the Wise is high in the councils of the Elves.”

“You’re kidding me.” (Except I did not say ‘kidding’. I used a word that referred to the excretion process.)

“No. I mean Elves. The Apsara are spirit beings, elves of light from the Land Beneath the Mountains of Tibet. They are also the High Ones, the
suntse
of our slain and long-lost homeland. We cannot ignore their voice.”

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, actually 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.”