‘How?’
He had come to his quarters in the See House. Standing at the fireplace was the figure he had met in the desert, the person he had followed down the well. This time, however, she had revealed herself. She was a young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, though he was wise enough to know that appearances could be deceptive, especially in the Underland. She had a bedraggled, hunted look, as if startled from sleep. She was plump, and pale, with small brown eyes. Her thick hair stuck out from her head like a brush.
‘How did we get here?’ Aranfal asked.
The woman opened her mouth, and Aranfal steeled himself for another onslaught of nonsense. But this time was different. Even the way she spoke had changed; her voice was lighter and softer.
‘Memories,’ she said. ‘All that matters in this world, or any other.’ She seemed confused. ‘Ah. We can think in straight lines, now. It isn’t always easy for us.’
She looked at the fire. She flicked a glance at him, and it appeared as though she might say something else. But she seemed to think better of it and turned her gaze back onto the flames.
Aranfal took a step towards the woman. She glared at him, and he stopped walking.
‘What were those things you were saying?’ he asked her. ‘Up above?’
She spun away from the fire and crossed the room, until she was an inch from his nose. She grasped him by the shoulders.
‘Torturer! Is it you?’
Aranfal nodded, and the woman glanced at the ceiling with fear in her eyes.
‘You are here for the game.’ She turned her head and a hundred different faces flickered before him, men and women of many ages and complexions. ‘There has not been a game since the last one. When was that? A moment ago, or a lifetime?’
‘Ten thousand years,’ said Aranfal.
‘Ah – good, only a moment.’ A look of confusion entered her eyes. ‘The game has begun. Why are you here?’
‘I do not know. I thought that perhaps you would show me the way.’
She looked over his shoulder. Aranfal turned and saw another room, far ahead, cast in a gloomy light.
‘What is in there?’ He turned back to her. ‘Where are you sending me?’
The woman cocked her head to the side. ‘Far from the road, it stood: the tree that never was.’
‘What?’
‘I saw a star, in the distance, though it did not see me.’
Oh no.
The woman smiled at him.
‘There was a frog, and a pond, in the golden glade. But I could not go there.’
She turned away, and shadows surrounded her. Her voice grew softer as she faded away.
‘I was with a child: my child. But it all soon came to an end.’
He was alone, then. He turned to face the new room, and went deeper into the Underland.
‘Time is a funny thing,’ said the King of the Remnants.
His prisoners did not reply.
‘Not so long ago, I lived at the top of a pyramid,’ he whispered. ‘What was it called again?’
He gnawed at his lower lip. How could he forget the name of that place, the black monstrosity that had been his home? He toyed with it, plucking his way through possibilities, until it came to him, floating on the stew of his mind.
‘The Fortress of Expansion,’ he said at last, clapping his hands. ‘Yes, that was it. I lived there, you know, for many years. I was pitiful, back then. I was like a little animal – do you understand? I feel so different, now. But it took a while to get me here, didn’t it? I didn’t just wake up one day, feeling better about things. It wasn’t even my … not even my powers, I would say. Not even the things I can do, and the titles I’ve got, down here. No – it was nothing but time.’
Far above, through a ceiling of thick glass, Canning could make out the sky outside. Sky. Could it even be called a sky, that tempest of storms? A swirling darkness hung above the Remnants; even in the daytime, the light of the sun peered out only occasionally from behind the clouds, as if by accident. What did that to the sky?
‘Was it you?’ he asked, turning to his prisoners and pointing a finger at the great ceiling above. ‘Did you do that?’
He smiled at the Duet. Once he had feared these creatures with such a burning intensity. He had feared their cruelty and their power, the sense that he was an insect, waiting to be crushed. But I’m not an insect any more.
They were lying on the ground, utterly still, curled together at the side of his throne. My dogs. He chuckled at the thought. They stared blankly ahead at the cavernous hall, this great space of steel and stone. They belonged to him now; they could do nothing unless he willed it. How did this happen? His recollection of those events was hazy. They had taken him to a memory, and he had trapped them inside it. Him. At first, they had been suspended in a kind of flickering light. Now, the light was gone, but they were still trapped; they were still in his power. Perhaps the light was never there. Perhaps it was only in my mind.
What had he done to them? They had gone to a great forest, high up in a tree. He had grown angry with them; he had felt himself capable of tugging at the memory, feeling his way through its power and using it for himself. And then he was back in the real world – if the Remnants could be called that – and they were his prisoners. When he looked at Boy and Girl, prostrated at his feet, utterly helpless, only one word came to mind. It was a word from the old books, a word from an age before science, before civilisation, before the Machinery.
Magic.
There was magic in memories, and he was very, very good at using it. He was so good, in fact, that he had trapped two ancient powers and made them into his pets.
I am a magician.
‘Your majesty.’
Canning snapped back to reality, to find Arch Manipulator Darrlan standing before him. The boy grinned, though it was uneasy. He always seems so uneasy, these days.
‘How long have you been there?’
‘Oh, five, six minutes, your majesty.’
‘And I have been …?’
‘In a reverie, my lord, positively in a reverie.’ He giggled and cast a nervous glance at the Duet.
Canning nodded. He found that his own memories could take a strange hold of him, if he allowed them. Getting drunk on the past.
He glanced at his surroundings. I am here. I know I am here. But somehow, it does not feel true. How could it be true?
This was a throne room like no other he had seen or read about. It was a vast space, formed largely of metal, like so much of the Remnants: functional, durable, with no regard for beauty. The throne was a small, ugly affair, built into the wall itself and reached by a series of narrow steps. Canning was now sitting in this blackened metallic lump. There were no paintings on the walls, no tapestries, no artefacts to commemorate the history of this world. Good. Why would we want to remember anything in a world like ours?
The glass ceiling did nothing to relieve the gloom; on the contrary, it added to it, forcing the occupants to look at the world outside, that dark and bleak panorama of misery, torn and ruined by the wars of the Manipulators and Old Ones.
He