Best Laid Plans (6 page)

Shader stared at his fingers clenching around a tuft of grass. He pulled out a fistful of rose-scented sod and held it before his face. Heaviness settled throughout his new form, his heavenly body. He felt suddenly weary, like he’d returned to the fight after he’d thought the battle won.

‘Here we are in such harmony,’ he said, letting the soil crumble between his fingers. ‘Our bodies are perfect. We can move anywhere at will, and in an instant. We cannot die. Perhaps if we can cultivate this concern for others that you mention we will have good cause to feel content.’ He didn’t believe a word of it. The illusion had already passed like the innocence of childhood.

‘Union with Ain should make us more real, Deacon Shader. There is no depth of reality here. I once thought as the others do, but then I began to have the nagging feeling that something was missing. What I have said to you is as much as I am able to grasp. I feel disconnected from life here, marginalized from existence. If we remain here then we may lie outside the world’s salvation. Your arrival, and Jarmin’s, has only made matters seem more urgent. Where are the others going after death? Why did you come here? What does this mean for the rest of us?’

‘Then what must we do?’

‘I wish I knew!’ Tajen cried with a mixture of frustration and despair. ‘But there is something about you and Jarmin that reminds me of what we have lost. You must think, Deacon Shader, try to remember the circumstances of your life, and, more importantly, your death. Therein lies the way out of this limbo, I suspect.’

S
ammy stood upon an impossibly tall pillar amidst a whirlwind of shifting colours and deafening roars. He teetered dangerously and should have fallen, but his body remained taut, his feet rooted to the summit as if they grew from it. He chanced a look downwards, but could see only a yawning hole of blackness, a clinging mist covering its mouth like a cobweb.

There was a tremendous crash and then searing jags of lightning blasted apart his thoughts. He was dead, he knew it. He wanted to cry out, but didn’t know how. There was nothing; nothing but a churning in his stomach and fire behind the eyes. Something bubbled up from deep inside him—a jumble of white-hot letters that formed into words and shattered, formed and shattered. Somehow, he knew he was being asked a question. He couldn’t hear it; couldn’t read it in the dizzying patterns of letters, but he felt it pulsing in his veins, squeezing through his innards, and rippling beneath his skin. His answer, though he had no idea why, was an unspoken yes.

All was still.

Sammy felt the softness of a cushion beneath him. He was sitting in an armchair before an open fire. A thickly woven rug formed a rectangle atop polished wooden floorboards. Soft sunlight filtered through latticed windows flanked by velvet curtains. It was like a storybook room. Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he’d dozed off while Mummy was reading to him. Maybe she’d be there if only he could wake up. But the heat from the fire felt far too real; the fabric of the chair was rough and sent up little puffs of dust when he patted it. He sneezed and then sniffed, wiping away a tear.

The room was a perfect square with white walls and dark-stained beams crossing the ceiling. There were no doors. He stood and went to the window so that he could peer outside. Twin suns hovered in infinite darkness, a tiny dot circling each. A third light appeared between the suns, a ball of flame streaking a long tail behind, its surface shimmering and changing until it became a face made of fire. There was a blinding flash of light. Sammy raised his hand to protect his eyes, staggered backwards and fell into the chair. He rapidly blinked away the stars behind his eyelids and lowered his arm. The curtains were being drawn by a man in a brown hooded robe.

‘Two suns light the heavens above the Void,’ the man said in a voice that crackled like paper being scrunched up. ‘An unusual sight for an Earth-boy, and even more so for a white one.’

Sammy sank back into the chair and shut his eyes tight. If he tried hard enough he might find himself back at home.

‘You are not dreaming, boy.’

Sammy heard the man shuffling towards him and began to shake. Heat fell on his face, feeling like the time he’d got too close to the fire at the Winter Fest pig roast so he could watch the fat dripping and fizzing. Rhiannon had pulled him away by his ear; told him he’d be roasting on a spit if he did it again. He opened his eyes a crack and peeked at a face of golden flame. He blinked against the glare, but couldn’t look away. The blazing eyes made him keep looking, silently promising him a secret that seemed as necessary as breathing. Tears blurred his vision as the heat burned his skin and stung behind his eyes. Sammy began to whimper, his head rocking from side to side. Sweat soaked his clothes and streamed from his forehead. He shook so hard the chair began to clatter against the floor, scraping and twisting, jumping on the rug. His breathing grew quicker, high up in his chest. He felt his heart thumping, the blood rushing in his ears. His eyes widened, fixed upon the burning face, and he opened his mouth to scream; but the scream turned to a gasp as something unseen stabbed his heart. White-hot flames ripped through his innards, singeing, melting, blistering. A burning coal lodged in his throat, choking him. Steam seared his nostrils, and the tears streaming down his face sizzled and boiled.

The hooded man turned away and the pain stopped. Sammy sagged in the chair. He was panting like a dog after water. He lifted his arms and saw no blisters. The skin was unharmed. His hands patted his chest. Nothing. No hole, no blade. He looked to make doubly sure. He was drenched in sweat and the skin of his chest rippled like a beaten drum, but there was no blood—not like there had been with his dad.

‘I am the Archon,’ the cowled figure said. He parted the curtains slightly so he could look out. ‘Come.’

Sammy forced himself out of the chair and stood at the window. One of the suns appeared larger, as if it had drawn nearer. The dot circling it was now a ball of greyish-blue.

‘Aethir,’ the Archon said. ‘The world of the Dreaming. Watch as it turns.’

The Archon waved his fingers and time seemed to speed up in response. The suns shifted across the dark, the planet turned on its axis, and blackness crept over its surface.

‘Two sides to the Dreaming, boy. Light and darkness. You are now looking at Qlippoth, the dark side of Aethir. These are the nightmares of the Cynocephalus.’ Light spilled from the Archon’s hood as he spoke. Sammy had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Huntsman’s people have a connection with Aethir. They worship the offspring of its creator, but the lord of Aethir is a pitiable creature, frightened of his own shadow.’ The Archon bowed his head as if remembering. When he looked up he pointed to the smaller of the two suns, its own orbiting planet a black speck.

‘This other world,’ he took hold of Sammy’s shoulders to grant him a better view, ‘is known to its inhabitants as Thanatos.’

Sammy felt the tug of the dark world. It drew his eyes, called to him. He felt himself reaching toward it.

‘It does not belong here.’ The Archon’s hands felt oddly cold as he pressed Sammy’s head downwards to look upon the inky black hole beneath, its emptiness covered by the misty web he’d seen from the top of the pillar.

‘And neither does the Abyss. My brother is the great deceiver. Where I brought with me the laws of our father, he brought nothing but despite and disorder. Even when I cast him back into the Void, he found a way to survive.’ The Archon’s voice spat and popped like a bushfire. Wisps of smoke escaped from beneath his hood, and his fingers dug into Sammy’s shoulders, spreading their peculiar chill. ‘Tell me, child, would you go there?’ The Archon released his grip and lowered his voice. ‘Would you enter the Abyss if the fate of worlds depended on it?’

Sammy stared at the mist covering the Void and felt it pulling at him. He knew he should be scared, but he felt only calm. He started to imagine a tunnel through space connecting him with the Abyss and gawped as a spiralling green cone began to form in front of him.

The Archon touched his hand to it and it disappeared. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now listen to what I expect of you. I have granted you powers to rival even the greatest of the Dreamers. You will make the journey to the Abyss soon. Someone is trapped there.’ The Archon’s hood rustled as he shook his head. ‘Without him, we may not be able to stop the coming crisis.’

Something felt wrong. Sammy didn’t like the way the Archon was telling him what to do. It wasn’t as if he was his dad. ‘I’m with Huntsman,’ he said, hoping that would make things clear.

‘Huntsman serves the children of the Cynocephalus,’ the Archon said.

Sammy stuck his bottom lip out, not understanding.

‘Murgah Muggui, Baru and their kind. Children of the Cynocephalus and grandchildren of my sister, Eingana. They have pledged themselves to me so that together we may thwart the Unweaving.’

‘But…But what—?’

‘Did Huntsman ever tell you about the Reckoning?’

Sammy shrugged. He’d mentioned it, but most of what Sammy knew came from listening to Elias. They’d taught about it at school, too: stuff about dragons and demons pouring from the sky and destroying the world of the Ancients.

‘Huntsman saved your world from Sektis Gandaw, a scientist of the worst kind who saw the creation of the cosmos as imperfect and believed he could make a better one. His long and murky history began centuries ago when he was first contacted by the Liche Lord, Otto Blightey.’

‘The bogey man?’ Sammy said, remembering stories Elias used to tell the kids about Jaspar Paris and Renna Cordelia, and an evil skull that drank souls.

‘Sektis Gandaw’s dark science developed out of Blightey’s magic,’ the Archon said. ‘Both bear the mark of the Abyss.’

Sammy was completely lost now. He screwed his face up into a frown. Rhiannon would have called it his “old man” look.

‘The Unweaving is like seeing someone else’s picture in the sand and raking over it in order to start your own,’ the Archon said. ‘Everything would end. In effect, it would never have started. Do you understand what that means?’

Sammy thought he did. ‘Sounds like a selfish clacker. Least that’s what my sister would say.’

The Archon chuckled. ‘A little more than selfish, I think, but that will do. He has been stopped twice before, but he is determined. There is so much you don’t know: the relationship of the Supernal Realm to the Earth; the changes brought by the Abyss and Aethir; the closing of the Void; the mechanics of the Unweaving…’

Sammy’s head hurt. He wanted the Archon to stop. Needed him to stop. He bunched his hands into fists and struck himself on the temples.

The Archon turned towards him, flame erupting from beneath his cowl. ‘Too much for a child to comprehend,’ he said. ‘All you need to know is that Huntsman serves his so-called gods and they serve me. You are his apprentice and I have a task for you.’

Sammy looked away from the Archon and back down at the wispy mesh of the Abyss. ‘I don’t want to go there,’ he said in a weak voice, whilst an altogether different part of him wondered what it would be like, what secrets it held.

‘What is happening now has happened before,’ the Archon said, coming to gaze at the darkness with Sammy. ‘Last time we failed. I trusted a philosopher named Aristodeus to bring down Sektis Gandaw, but he was not equal to the task. He succumbed to the deceptions of the Abyss, and it is there he now languishes.’

‘You want me to bring him back?’ Sammy asked, feeling suddenly rather brave.

‘No.’ The light spilling from the Archon’s hood flared. ‘He has sunk too deep into the mire of the Abyss. Yet he has a new plan to avert the catastrophe. He has cheated time, changed things in the past to influence the future. Players have been assembled and the game has commenced, but now our greatest hope has fallen at the first hurdle.’ The Archon rested a hand atop Sammy’s head. ‘Events are moving inexorably towards the Unweaving. Aristodeus’s hubris may have led him deeper into deception.’

‘Then what do you want me to do?’ Sammy asked.

The Archon began to break up into tongues of fire that swirled around Sammy’s head. ‘Deacon Shader,’ a voice like a storm sounded from the flaming vortex. ‘The man who loves your sister.’

Sammy stared into the fire, knowing he had only moments left and so much still to learn. ‘Deacon? What’s he got to do with any of this?’

‘Everything,’ said the voice of the Archon. ‘He was slain before his time and does not know the perils his soul now faces. I will go ahead of you. I cannot remain long in the Abyss, but I will leave a beacon there for you, something to guide you. Find him, child. Bring him back.’

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