I was abruptly aware of a third entity, rapidly racing down the corridor behind me—and it was not a friend! I glanced back at the thing, and gasped at what I saw—and then….
* * * *
…And then I woke up, choking for breath.
“Master,” my companion said, jumping up on my chest. “What is it?”
I told the wherret everything that had happened to me in that foreign place.
“This was real,” I said. “All of it. This was not a place of my imagining. It exists, Scooter.”
“Tell me about the ‘other’,” the creature said.
“I saw very little of it, but what I could feel was like nothing I’ve ever encountered. It had the rough shape of a very large bird, but ’twas a vile, vicious thing full of malice aforethought, with claws on its wings, two spikes on its legs, and jagged, knife-like teeth. It would have killed me, had I given it half the chance.”
“Yes, it would have,” Scooter agreed. “I’ve heard of such beings, although I’ve never actually seen one. Master, this…creature derives from one of the distant Otherworlds, far out into the æther. You cannot go there and ever hope to return.”
But I was not convinced. It is ever such with man, that he desires that which he cannot attain, and disdains that which is near at hand.
Although I’d had all the makings of a good life in Kórynthia, recent events had suddenly tainted my future—and that of the realm—with uncertainty. So, perhaps I would have better luck trying something else. Perhaps I could leave the Kingdom during its time of chaos, and return after things were settled again.
This captive woman might provide an escape from my troubles. The more I considered the notion, the more I felt energized for the first time in a great many years. There was something about her plight that touched a place deep within my soul. Why, I could go on a quest, just like the knights of eld! I could rescue the lady and make my fortune, and then return home, enshrouded in glory, a legend among mages.
My life here had become stale and static, unworthy of a scion of the great House of Parakôdês. My ancestor of that name had been known as a man of action, a man of principle, a man who wouldn’t have hesitated to venture forth into the unknown void, oh yes! Rescue a damsel in distress—no problem!
I can do this, I told myself. I can find her. I can save her. I can find myself again in the process.
No greater fool does a man ever see than his own image in the mirror, reflected back at him.
In the end, all the worms really do ooze out of the clay. In the end, they consume one’s being.
CHAPTER SIX
“I ONLY DOUBT HER
HISTORY AND HER SINCERITY”
But to make such a change in my station, I’d first have to know a great deal more about the situation—not as I might envision it, were I writing this tale, but as it actually existed.
The sky-orb was such a simple device—really just a refinement and reduction of the old thro-mirror so popular in earlier days. It allowed limited communication across the æthernet—or could be used, as I had employed it recently, to scan for passageways into the Otherworlds.
I’d been taught at University that the Otherworlds were alternate realities to our own existence. No one seemed to know exactly how they were formed or organized, or even how many of them might fill the ætherspace; but we knew they existed because men like me had ventured both deliberately and accidentally into the void—and some few of these had even actually returned, bearing tales of grand adventures in the places “beyond beyond.”
I’d ferreted out every account of these journeys in the Bibliotheca Magica during my student years, and had been stirred as never before by the glorious tales of these grand adventurers: the redoubtable Maximus Pomptinus, the unbowed Asinus Vetulus, the enigmatic Melanchthôn Malitiosus, the seeker-after-knowledge Doctor Scarabbaios, the sword of justice Prince Théodoric d’Aistolfe, the venturer-into-othertimes Elissa of Adrianople, and the accidental time traveler Don Cesarino Copacabana, to name but a few.
Before I could join their ranks, however, I had to find some way of strengthening the communication link between myself and the woman, and confirming exactly where she was. Without such basic information, I was as helpless as she.
I’d once heard of a mage who’d taken several sky-orbs and strung them together as a linked chain. I asked Scooter for his advice.
“Master,” it said, “what you propose is certainly possible. But why do this? You know nothing of this woman. She might even be a spirit seeking to ensnare a stray soul.”
“I don’t believe that,” I said. “I could feel her pain through my dream. That was true—it couldn’t have been faked.”
“Even so,” Scooter said, “even so…Master, she may regard you as her only possible way of escaping this…this trap, or whatever it is, since you don’t actually know.”
“I understand the risk.”
“Do you? Do you really? You know nothing about the Otherworlds.”
“And you know more?” I asked. “You’re a creature of the Spiritworlds, Scooter. You’ve never even been to the Otherworlds.”
My companion looked at me then in that sly way it had. Its long whiskers curled up on either side, and I swear it grinned at me—except, of course, that wherrets can’t really grin (I think).
“Very well,” the creature said. “Yes, Master, you can connect two sky-orbs together, or even three, although balancing the energies of three would be difficult even for a Class vii Mage. I would suggest you try matching a pair of them first.”
I’d never attempted this particular trick before, but I soon discovered exactly what Scooter meant. When employing a sky-orb, one must focus all one’s attention on the specus of the thing—the center of its being—then seize hold of it while turning the stream of its essence elsewhere. Trying to control two of the spheres at once—coordinating their energies into one fixed probe to illuminate the æther—well, it proved nigh unto impossible.
I had to attempt the trick over and over and over again before I finally got it right—and just holding the beam true to its course required all my strength.
“Scooter!” I gasped. “Help!”
It swiftly moved into my consciousness then, loaning me some of its energy. With the wherret’s assistance, I was finally able to send my soul deep into the ætherspace, looking for that unique vibration that I recalled from my dreamtime. But still it took me several hours of searching to find it.
“Help me!” It was that eerie voice once again.
“Where are you?” I asked.
Silence lengthened into eternity.
“Here.” The reply was hesitant, almost timorous. “I am here. Focus on my voice. Are you the one who came before?”
I used the power of the conjoined sky-orbs to trace the sound of the woman’s soul to its source.
“I am,” I said.
And then I was there!
The room was large, I sensed, fashioned of the same red brick that I’d encountered before. Arrow slits in the walls allowed the sun to penetrate the darkness—so brightly, in fact, that I could not discern anything clearly.
Then I realized what the woman had done: she’d created a makeshift thro-mirror from an open container of wine or water. So long as the sun touched the still, slack surface of the liquid, the contact could be maintained. It was a brilliant artifice, one bespeaking a desperate situation—and a very high level of magical attainment. Sustaining such a link for even a small amount of